Topic: Tip to the posters: You don't need to purposely make your replies longer (Read 466 times)

It might be the case on some cases, but like said earlier in this topic, it's mostly due to them dramatically increasing the character count on purpose just for their posts to be counted for bounties.

OP you are correct. You will find over time a lot of behaviors that at first will drive you crazy. I wrote this a while ago and would link it to members when I'd report them for multiposting, or in an effort to end massively long nested quotes.
[Tips] Posting technique

You may enjoy the part about Post Content. There is not much that can be done other than trying to educate people you feel are doing it unintentionally.

Personally, topic sentence is the most important thing that posters should keep in minds whenever they start writing down a post.
Long or shot, it does not matter because each person has special way to express their ideas via writing them down.
It's personal style, however writers should follow some fundmental things:
(1) Coherence
(2) Cohesion
(3) They should write the topic sentence for their post first, especially if they have intention to write medium or long discussion with their posts.
From topic sentence, they can easily expand their ideas. Topic sentence is very important to help readers catch the main ideas of writers. They can catch it at the first sentences of posts (usually the first to third sentences).

..posting long replies on threads depends upon the essence on what is being stated on the topic,,some makes long replies because they need to depend what they said..but your right,,their is no need for long replies,,just make it short and simple and easy to understand..

I always see long replies get merits but this is not the key factor in getting merit as what you have said. But long reply may be in need depending on the topic being brought because some of the reply needs an explaination and to get the point of what the reply has been posted usually it will be expounded with the user. Thus, letting the user expresses and deliever the idea towards the topic that deserve a merit.

Short or long post what really matter is that how you convey the users with it depending on how serious one may be in the reply or how he/she insert sense of humor in that topic.

No wonder. This might be 99% of the case then.

To the people replying about "each person has their own style", true! But I'll clear things up once again, I'm referring to the ones who makes their replies unnecessarily longer, and due to hugeblack's reply, yep, it's definitely because of the minimum character limit.


Oh, I forget to reply to this:
I don't give a single crap about merits. It's not that I can sell it for bitcoin.

You may need to review the OP in light of  some recent statistics provided by @suchmoon: [SUCH GUIDE] Guaranteed method to earn many merits, statistically proven. The post goes on to suggest making posts with a length of 549 characters using words from a provided list.

Note: @suchmoon’s stats apply specially today, and may not be valid on any other day of the calendar.

Two things:
(1) Shit campaigns usually don't require such post-length criterion. And if they require it, it is mostly pseudo-requirement because they don't care and don't spend time to check post length in reality. They require it as pseudo-initiative to give feelings that their campaigns are high quality, and reliable;
(2) Good managers often spend their time to check both post-length, post meanings, and post contribution in context of dicussions it published.

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Short or long, it does not matter. The matter is contributions of posts for discussion that they joined. If posts don't contribute anything valuable to discussions, they are shit posts, no matter how long they are.

Many campaigns place some restrictions on the minimum number of characters per paid post, so many tend to create longer posts to avoid the unpaid situation and show that they do a good job at posting. "Merits are not always the goal."

Long post or short post is not that important. Valuable information that contributes to the optimal solution is what counts. Short post is more efficient of course if it can contain everything required to supply the same information that is contained within the longer post.

Of course anything can be taken to extremes. 1000-5000 words is usually more than sufficient to exhaust all relevant and on topic information required before perhaps another one is required. That's if you need to supply a lot of background each time to substantiate your claims and help others understand your line of reasoning.

This is especially important if you are presenting perhaps a line of reasoning that goes against the status quo or which is widely accepted and currently functioning mechanisms that people are familiar and comfortable or happy to work within for their own reasons. People are far more reluctant to adopt the truth or perhaps a more optimal solution for the entire board if they are happy with their current situation.

I mean if you simply want to say I agree or disagree in a flowery way with no real substance then perhaps as low as 200 words is enough.  So there are no hard and fast rules of post length. Just keep typing until you feel all essential information has been presented. Most can type over 100 words per min I expect and read far more quickly so not a big deal to spend that time if you are really interested.

You should consider that you are addressing multi levels of ability and relevant knowledge specific to your post, so better to cast your net wider than too narrow.

Good posters tend to already understand these facts, and bad posters can never adapt them. Someone who actually really have something to write within a discussion would never require to add anything extra to it only to make it look good since if it is already a good point, it doesn't need any more beautification, but if someone doesn't know what to write, they would definitely try to find an approach that would partly make their post look good, and they think that a long post looks better to the eye, so they take that approach, which is not right.

People are just different. Some write shorter posts while others write longer. Same thing can be seen in oral communication. When I was at college we had this colleague who was a bit shy and he would never speak unless spoken to. An intelligent guy but socially awkward.
We had this joke going around that you can sit next to him for 8 years and he will never be the one to speak first.   

Everyone has different style of posting.
As long as they can say their thought or opinion on the subject, I don't see a problem with that.
But of course, shorter is better, less time to type. LOL

This is why I wrote that part there:
Newbies should spend most of their time for read, and learn, not write.
Writing is the last priority for them when they have something need help and don't have available answers for their issues; or when they have something serious to disucss, to help others.
Writing, should never be the first priority in the forum. Reading, learning, searching, and brainstorming.

I agree with your opinion, except in part about their goal as you stated above because sometimes it becomes a habit for someone to write long-winded posts.
In the event when it is necessary to write a long detailed post, I still think that they should "refactor" their post to make it more compact and easy to understand.

Not at all. Not because your reply is long, it doesn't necessarily mean your main goal is to receive merits. Some replies being quite long is a good thing, for the poster to be able to give out as much information as possible, but only if necessary.

"Keep it simple" is my logic when I want to make reply to someone's post,because most of the time people will get lazy to read all those big replies.

Only the posters whose intention is to merit will make their replies longer and make it like a constructive one.

It realy depends for what Reason you write a post , sometimes you can help or say your opinion with your post in a few lines.
If you would explain something special or want to know some thing thats complex or bigger then you should write as much in your post as possible ,
so others understand the problem or the issue you have and can write there opinion !

Read the P.S. message on the end of my topic. Thanks.

Post isn't belongs to Meta. Move your post on B&H section. Because I don't think this post necessary on meta. I am not saying that you make this long post in order to earn merit but it's true your post is long as well.

We know that, constructive post could be even with 20 character. But it doesn't mean all 20 character posts are constructive.

For my one month stay here in Bitcointalk(because Reddit went to crap), one thing I could notice from people trying to earn merits: purposely making their replies longer

I couldn't count how many times I've read replies so unnecessarily long, and worse, it doesn't even make the message any better at all. Most just add random gibberish to make the post look good.

Here's the thing. Increasing your post's character count doesn't necessarily make your post more or less "constructive". You can make constructive and merit-worthy posts without needing to reach like 4-6 lines of text, which is mostly the case.

P.S. I'm not saying that novel-length posts are bad. It's just unnecessary in some or most cases.


-arbiter5