Gengulphus wrote:beeswax wrote:Reading these last few post I think we are expecting FAR too much from the board Moderators and they do have other things to do and are doing it for free too. Its really up to the rest of us to perhaps think a bit more about what we post and how we post and not write essays and I am prone to doing that too and we can review it and change it unlike TMF and so my recommendation is just allow the Mods to do whatever they feel is necessary and if we don't like it, tough!
No, as things stand it is not up to the rest of us to not write essays, but simply not to read them if we don't want to. Or to report them as "Too long" if we really don't think they're suitable for this site because of their length, though not to keep on doing so if they start getting PMs from the moderators telling them that the site has no objection to long posts. Or to get stooz and Clariman to modify the site rules to say that posts are not allowed to be over a certain length
It's probably off topic to discuss questions of good writing style here. So the prudence of writing long screeds here is either worth its own topic, or not. As you say the main effect of writing long posts is to deter people from reading them ("TLDR", as the kids say). And that might not matter to the author, who may just enjoy writing and derive pleasure from going into a lot of detail. That author may in fact not care if few people read it, or even if nobody reads it. It is the writing itself that is the end.
As such I don't think we need a limit on the length of a post, aside from any software/technical limits imposed from without. I write long screeds myself sometimes, like here
I do think there are some guidelines (not rules) about writing style that are helpful for everyone however, for writers, readers and moderators. Breaking longer posts into paragraphs is one - a long post is easier to read if relevantly divided up into discrete segments.
Limiting the amount of re-quoting of other peoples' posts helps with a focus on the part you are responding to.
Not trying to cover every angle to a topic in a single post also helps. An example might be not trying to forestall possible counter arguments, but rather deal with them if and when they arise.
The use of lists, numbered points and bullet points also aids legibility.
I sometimes think it depends on one's education. In the classes I took, a lot of time and effort was spent on precis. One was given a long passage and one had to precis it into a maximum number of words whilst retaining as much meaning as possible. I recall such exercises featuring prominently in the civil service exams I took a million years ago. But for those who perhaps studied science rather than the arts, such skills may not have been emphasised.
In practice I suspect that moderators do as you suggest. If they can easily change a post to make it conform with the rules, then they do. If it is a more complex task then they either reject the report or cull the entire post, based on their best judgement and experience (and probably bearing in mind the parties involved if they are usual suspects).
What would irk me is having my words changed so that meaning is lost, and I think the risk of that increases with complex posts with lots of internal cross-references. I'd rather the post was removed altogether and I'll try and replace it with something better. As things stand that probably means me keeping my own version of the post for easy editing/replacement.
