"Long" Thread Warnings

[the_std]

Okay, I know this is really nit-picky and silly, but it drives me nuts when I see a warning in a thread title about it being really long, and then you actually open the original post and it's a couple of paragraphs, that's it. Maybe I have a different reading tolerance or something compared to most people who read forums, but I hardly consider a couple of paragraphs, or anything less than a scroll-bar's worth, to be long enough to warrant a warning.

I'm not sure why it annoys me, as it's not doing anything to hurt or inconvenience me... I guess it just gets my hopes up.

[Gravekeeper]

I will use the term "epic" or "painful" if my digests are sufficiently lengthed, or sufficiently disturbing. But then, I can remember occasions where I have had to shorten a post to get back inside the character limit of the forum. >.>

[insertNameHere]

Well there are plenty of people who talk about the length of things and are completely off base and really need a ruler, or the knowledge to use it. Take that how you will, because well use a dirty mind and you will get it how I was intending.

The moral of the story is certain words are subjective and based on the poster viewpoint or lack there of. Maybe we need to establish a word count based system, that if it under 250 words your not allowed to use long.

Random, corollary
Job apps that are online and what you to describe your work history "in detail" and only give you 250 words.

[HYHYBT]

I suspect a lot of it is that it's hard to judge how long a post is; anything more than a few lines *looks* huge in the editing box. Then again, I've never seen much sense in the "long post" warning even when it's true; does anybody really ever complain about a post being too long, unless it's either all quoted material or not broken into paragraphs?

[Lace Neil Singer]

I've never warned about thread length; then again, my threads are rarely longer than a few paragraphs.

[Ree]

Some people are in a hurry and only have time to skim.
I think some people just use the "long" warning as a courtesy to let them know to come back and read it later when they have more time.

Perhaps some people personally feel that a couple of paragraphs is a long post, so when their own posts run longer than normal, they fell they need to warn people that it's a long one.

I often put in the word "long" because I know my posts do tend to be long once I start venting, and I guess it's both a warning as I mentioned, and an apology as well. (Not that I think a lot of people read my posts, but I do it just in case. I've been a bit paranoid since someone told me they don't really read my posts because they're too long. )