Do you read all the posts on a very long thread before responding (so you don't duplicate another poster)?
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Very rarely, if it's an interesting subject. For most long threads I just read the last few pages.
I agree with the person who said the longer threads tend to have pages and pages that go off topic. Sometimes it's fighting, sometimes it's just chat, but whatever it is, it's interesting at the time but months later is tedious to wade through. Nothing against chat--it can have a lot of value at the time it's written--but I feel no obligation to read through pages of it just for the sake of reading an entire thread. The last few pages of most threads are usually enough to get me up to speed on a topic.
I'll read through if it's interesting, but if a fight breaks out I'm gone. Well, I'm gone unless it's a good fight. It's fun to watch some idiot trolling and getting no traction, or a know-it-all that doesn't.
I'm a fast reader so can easily manage a lot of posts very quickly so generally the answer is "yes". Often when I've read through there's nothing I have to add as everything (particularly on a long thread) has pretty much already been repeated half a dozen times already!
What really irritates me is posters who just can't be bothered to read even a couple of pages and then pop in to make a comment that's already been made several times over or, worse, seem to have not even read the original post and either make a totally irrelevant point or ask questions, the answers to which were already addressed in the first post.
And let's not even get into people who read only the first post of a multi-page thread which dates back several years and answer that post when a new question has been added to the thread just a couple of posts back ...
Kvetching over. Another cup of coffee and I'll be all set!
What really irritates me is posters who just can't be bothered to read even a couple of pages and then pop in to make a comment that's already been made several times over or, worse,!
....worse is when many of them don't read anything but the op and it contains false information that was debunked within the next 2 posts.
Especially rife on the P&C board.
Bravo. I was planning to start almost the exact same thread
Ironically people have answered just I like would have. Except that sometimes I read every 2nd or 3rd page, which often include quotes from the better posts on skipped pages.
....worse is when many of them don't read anything but the op and it contains false information that was debunked within the next 2 posts. Especially rife on the P&C board.
I've found it everywhere, and it is one of the things that really makes me crazy about forum dynamics. From my observations, a surprisingly large number of people only seem to read the OP's original post and then post their response to it, even when the #2 post says something like "NOOO!!! Don't do it!!! It's a scam and here's the proof: !!!"
I once watched this happen where Post #1 reposted a particularly egregious hoax and then urged people to take a specific action and then to say they had done it. It was followed by Post #2 which completely exposed the hoax, with documentation and warning, and then posters #3 - 15 chimed In with "Done!," "Did it!," and the like.
From the sidelines, as the day wore on and the line got longer and longer, the mental picture came to me of a parade of mammoths following each other off an icy cliff to their doom.
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