How often do you fully read a long winded question, or answer?

Yes I skip the Wall-o-Text when I have problems reading or concentrating. If I’m super interested then I will read on.

I tend to skip the long winded ones that are just someone telling a “cute” family anecdote or a complex poorly written relationship question.

The way most people write – including, sadly, in this forum more and more – less and less. It’s not – ever – “the amount of text” that puts me off, but the lack of clarity of thought expressed; the rambling, incoherent and contradictory rationalization passed off as “reasoning”, and all those associated oxymoronic logical fallacies; the lack of punctuation; pronoun hells and thickets of syntactical obfuscation; failure to include paragraph breaks where such are clearly indicated; misspellings and misuses of simple words that most of us learned before sixth grade (and apparently forgot by the tenth), and sentences that aren’t sentences. And questions that are too trite, or that are asked as part of an argument – that is, not “real questions” at all – and poorly disguised attempts at bad Socratic dialog by questioners who wouldn’t know Socrates any better than they know themselves.

Oh, and run-on sentences like that doozy in the previous paragraph can drive me round the bend, too, when they’re not crafted with any kind of care. I tend to exempt myself sometimes, and I suppose I shouldn’t. You can dock me on my next check if you like. Call me a hypocrite and mark me down.

But when the questions or responses are interesting and well-written then you can’t keep me away from them.

No, especially if it is a self serving question, or a question about family that goes on and on.

If I know the writer, I might, and I will probably send them a message asking why they wrote so poorly.

If I’m passionate about the subject, I will start to read it. I will continue only if it’s well written. Otherwise, I will switch to skimming.

If I’m interested in the subject, I will skim it. If it’s poorly done, I’ll stop and move on.

If my interest is weak, I will immediately skip the whole thing.

I usually skip the questions with long, rambling descriptions. If I choose to answer one, I’ll probably only skim read the details.

If it’s a rambling post, and I can’t quickly grab the rhyme or reason, I get bored quickly and try to get the meaning through subsequent posts.

However, if the details or answer actually require it, or the post is beautifully and descriptively worded, I read on with wild abandon.

@chyna This. Those rambling family drama questions don’t interest me one bit. Sometimes longer ones are worth reading, but other times people can write a lot and say very little.

Almost always for the OP and their details. Mostly always for everybody else’s answer, unless it seems clear from the get go that they are talking about other things that are not really about the OP’s question.

Occasionally, I will re-read a long set of details, multiple times, because there are times when a question is written somewhat poorly, or just doesn’t give enough detail, but that doesn’t mean the question isn’t valid. I often re-read those types of questions so that I can ask some questions of the OP to clarify what they are really wanting to know. This doesn’t always help, but sometimes other Jellies can help.

A question: Almost always.

Answers not so much if they are too long.:

Almost never. I’m a big fan of succinct writing.

Certainly, there are some posts that need many words. But, that’s not true for rants in the guise of questions or lectures posing as answers. When I encounter a Wall of Words, at this or any other website, I usually move along.

If it’s a family story with lots of quotes, I’ll almost never read the whole thing and I’ll almost never answer it because I don’t have time or interest in that type of thing.

If it’s some kind of love issue, and it’s a big wall of text without breaks for paragraphs, almost never.

I should add that when I have something long to type out, I try to make sure I put in a lot of breaks so it’s easier to read.

Nope, walls of text seldom get read past the first few lines.

The big determinant on whether I read answers is never the length or the tedium of wading through grammatical quicksand, punctuation mysteries, etc. If the question really grabs my attention, I will read every answer. Eloquence and brevity are handy, but I think according such traits top priority here would be a mistake. I’ve learned over time that very profound thoughts can be neglected simply because they are poorly expressed. It isn’t the paint that makes the Ferrari.

come to think of it, I bet participation in our little forum probably hones our writing skills. Whadda ya think? Oh and for the questions that really grab me, I often dash off an answer before reading those already posted. It’s always
embarrassing to find that you’ve repeated someone ahead of you.

I’d say it does. Like I have said before, spellcheck is not something I use anymore.

Depends on what the question is, how interesting I find it, how hard or interesting I find it is to read, and how much I am trying to avoid having to do whatever I’m procrastinating on by reading Fluther questions. If I write an answer, I’ve usually read the whole question, but maybe 5–10% of the time (for long ones) I’ve skipped part of it if I thought I knew what it said without reading. Sometimes I also read a question but mis-read something thinking it said something else, especially when I’m tired.