AIBU to think that posts need to have a word limit?

[user1471538275]

I am finding very long OPs hard to engage with.

I long for brevity - bullet points even in both OP and replies. AIBU?

There are some that just go on and on and I tend to give up on those. Men in particular on here seem capable of self indulgent naval gazing OP’s.
tricky though because people get shot down for drip feeding if every minute detail is not included in the OP

The OPs that I tend to give up on and hide are those that are clearly AI authored/assisted, or very long screeds without paragraph breaks or much punctuation.

My biggest bugbear is quoting the OP in replies. Please make it stop. We’ve all read the OP.

Sometimes I do struggle to read longer posts but I think that is due to my lack of patience rather than the poster.

I think some people who post often won’t have people in real life to share with and if they don’t put all of the information in one post they get accused of drip feeding.

I agree, quoting the OP is unnecessary as it's easy to find at the top of the page.

I prefer to clip quotes in my reply so that it is specific to the point.

When I open a thread and the opening post is long I back out. Long opening threads full of waffle are just tiresome.

YABU

@LoveIsJustARiver I appreciate your conciseness

There's a fine line between "here's all the relevant details about the situation so I'm not drip feeding" and "here's so much detail that's irrelevant that getting to the point is tedious"

And it seems all too often people go the wrong way

Maximum paragraph length I would appreciate.

I can’t read the ones that are basically essay length and don’t have any paragraph breaks or minimal. It genuinely hurts my head and so I’m inclined to agree.

I thought they now only quote a bit of the OP followed by an ellipsis and you can click if it you want to see it all?
Worse, imo, is the quoting of long replies (which appear in full) followed by "This" or 100% or whatever brief agreement.

I prefer to clip quotes in my reply so that it is specific to the point

So do I if it's a long post.
For a short one it's quicker (and lazier, I know) to just click "Quote".

Expressing oneself concisely and with minimal waffle is a skill and not everyone has it.

Not everybody has a gift for communication that enables them to get their story across clearly and concisely.

And then as others have mentioned, there is the drip feed thing which is annoying. Someone sounds wildly unreasonable from their OP and then, after a slew of scathing responses, reveals some huge mitigating circumstances that renders all previous responses pointless.

I admit that if an OP is rambling and poorly constructed, or contains no paragraph breaks, I just back out.

I click away from them, it gets to a point where it's a bit rude/entitled to expect anyone to wade through the entire relationship history and every single gripe.

The words 'fast forward to' are usually a good clue to just click away. Or 'lets say friend A/B/C/D'- let's not.

I wouldn't call communication a gift - it's a skill and skills are improved by practice.

I just don’t read posts that are walls of text with no paragraphs.

And mandatory paragraphs too please, rather than migraine inducing wall of text.

I don't think this is something Mumsnet needs to police. If you find them hard to engage with then just don't engage surely? I never bother with long ones. Especially if they add some disclaimer like 'get yourself a cup of tea and settle down, this is a long one'

The long ones are usually a bit unhinged 😬

Length is fine, too much brevity often means drip-feeding later. My issue is when it’s long but not broken into paragraphs. I find it hard to read in one continuous block, especially on a small screen.

If I click into a thread and the opening post is long I just back out. Same if someone gives a long reply I don't read it just scroll past.

I have very little patience indeed for (almost invariably male) posters so ensconced in their own solipsism that they think I have a full ten minutes to read their OP …

But there definitely should be draconian punishment for the poster following the OP who quotes the entire opening post. Unless they can produce proof of a particular condition that makes this necessary for them, permanent banishment from the Internet is the only appropriate solution.

Many of them are streams of consciousness, and therapy sessions for the poster.

However, let them at it, we can skip over such OPs very easily, and pick up on them at a later stage in the thread if the topic interests us. It's not always necessary to read the entire OP. Usually I find, the story evolves and clicking on "OP only" posts usually clarifies things eventually without having to read reams of text.

Patience....

If it’s a long OP with only a single post, I swerve. If an OP isn’t engaged with their own post, why should I be?