The impenetrable screed

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For those reading this thread, I'll simply share my own opinion:

As a READER, if you come across a long-winded post, a wall of text, etc., and you lose interest about a third of the way in, then it's probably best you don't even attempt to respond to such a thread. Another example would be if you feel the piece's demands exceed your interest, then, once again, it's probably best not to respond or get involved if it doesn't interest you.

If you're the WRITER of such pieces, and you're confused why no one is responding, then I think there's some good advice on how to get a better readership based on things people have suggested in this-here thread.

But if you feel like writing a long-winder, then, by all means do. You can't expect a great deal of responses, but I don't think you should feel discouraged from writing what you wish.

Are you trying to catch a lot of fish? Or are you just looking for one or two jems to shine through and don't really care about readership? That should be your basis for your writing.

Fair point

I'm not criticising this topic but want to point out it's possible people could follow all these tips yet still not get replies. Wherever people congregate there tend to be cliques. Also to a degree this forum is weighted towards American culture. Most the members are American so the humour, topics of discussion and frames of reference tend to be American.

Suppose an Aspie from Italy joins here, they may want to talk obsessively about cooking which wouldn't interest most members yet in Italy it's perfectly normal for everyone to have long, detailed conversations about food.

Or an Aspie from Japan will have a very different set of values they've learned based on their notion of honour, and they may be more formal in the way they communicate, which could seem unfriendly to some.

Also different countries have different things going on. For example there are countries where bribes are commonplace in the education and health system and if a member posted about these, some of us wouldn't relate to it at all. Or some countries are more family orientated where it's normal to live with your family for a longer period or look after elderly relatives yourself instead of care workers doing it. There are places where Other things that unite people like music taste or preference for different films or TV shows also vary somewhat depending on the country someone's from.

As long as it's formatted properly, I often enjoy a long post more than a short, vague one. Sometimes, when a member posts a really short inquiry, I have to dig through their post archives to find the necessary context in order to respond (I ignore this kind of post more often than the long-winded ones). It also depends on the writing style, of course. I can think of a few members here whose long posts I particularly enjoy. Maybe that kind of content is technically better suited for a blog rather than a forum, but if you can't info dump on an Aspie forum, where can you info dump? But then, I think I'm one of those who tends to over-elaborate at times. So maybe I'm biased in my own favor.

I used to read all the really long posts before considering whether I wanted to reply, but I have since realized that I have better things to do than to read a post with no formatting where the author could express the ideas far better in shorter length and more clarity.

Is this actually true? I know there are quite a few from the UK and various parts of Europe, Australia, Canada, Asia, and a very few from South America. I never assume anyone is in the US unless their profiles or their text tell me so.

Fifasy makes a good point regarding other cultures. There are smatterings of posts from places we Americans barely acknowledge exist. But most of all, Aspies are by definition not good at communicating. All my life I have found it so difficult to say something in 20 words or less because (delete the long explanation here ). I didn't realize this was an aspie trait until I started reading WP just one year ago.

People who find it necessary to write a lot probably don't know how to shorten it up, or even break it into paragraphs. They are unable to pinpoint the salient information and/or question. People will post as they write and let others respond as they feel moved to do so. I don't think moving towards a standardized type of post would be beneficial to the forum. Not that that was what Bea was suggesting....just saying....

Its kinda obvious that's true, and true for rather obvious reasons that aren't anyone's fault.

True but irrelevant.

Alex lives in Virginia, so its an American based website, with mostly American members, with the rest of the English speaking world making up the majority of the remainder, and the entire non English speaking world being the minority of the minority. So American culture dominates, with the UK being a distant second in influencing the zeitgeist of WP (because Brits are the second biggest single national group).

But even non English speakers can benefit from brevity in their posts, and with using spacing for paragraphs. Though, now that I think about it, the worst offenders are usually fellow Americans and not the English-as-a-second language speakers from Poland, Brazil, or India.

I still question whether it's true. The obvious way to answer it would be to ask the site developers for web stats. But to the naked eye, no, I don't think that it IS obviously true. The country that hosts the site doesn't need to be the location that most of the users come from.

I'm going to request the stats.

I sometimes feel I may write too much in a post. If I do, I'm sorry. I do try to separate things into paragraphs. I feel though, in order to clearly explain my thoughts in writing, sometimes I need to share background, context, a similar experience, etc.

I do agree that a very long block of text with no breaks or long text that seems to be crafted in a visual design using different length lines are both posts that I pass on reading. My desire in both cases isn't strong enough to try to decipher the content.

We have many prominent posters from places other than the US. Most of the moderators are non-US.

US politics dominates in the News and PPR threads, though.

Yes I think there are more Americans here than any other cultures. I avoid the news and current events thread and the PPR because it's mostly about Trump.

Most of the internet seems to be dominated by the US. Whenever I download a game from Play Store on my phone the games all seem to be American-based.

I feel I have to Americanise my posts in case people here don't understand what I'm saying. I've got attacked before for using UK words, an American user was rude to me just because he didn't understand something I said, when he could have looked it up first. I have never heard of the words in this thread title before,("screed" and "impenetrable"), but instead of attacking the OP, I kind of guessed what it meant by reading the OP.

What I hate though is when people abbreviate something and doesn't explain what it means, like, "does anyone here get a THPO?" or something (I made those letters up). Sometimes abbreviations are difficult to look up on Google.

My initial thought to the thread title was it was about decent flooring

Well there you have it from the horse's mouth. For more discussion, see "How global are we?" in the Administration section.

Oh, sorry, I bumped by accident.

"Screed" is a funny, and somewhat uncommon word. Basicallly its another word for "rant".

But "impenetrable" is pretty common. Am surprised that you have never heard nor read someone talk about "impenetrable armor", or an "impenetrable forest", or like that. Just means "it cant be penetrated".