D&D General Poll: Should a poster be expected to read (or at least skim) all posts before posting in a thread?

[Stalker0]

A common motiff. You have your 15 page thread, and someone posts "so I skipped the first 15 pages, but here are my thoughts".

I personally consider this extremely arrogant. The person is effectively saying "other people's thoughts are not worthy of my time, but I think my thoughts should consume the time of others". Further, this often leads to duplicative posting, many times the poster writes something that has already been discussed at length in the 15+ pages prior.

On the flip side, as thread lengths get longer, the investment gets greater, and if posters are expected to read the whole thread, than the likelihood of new thoughts into the thread goes down substantially.

So what do you think is the better social convention: Posters should read (or at least skim) the entirety of a thread before posting, or should just post at their leisure?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Yes but they won't and you can't make them. People who skip threads to comment as far less annoying than the two or three people that have side tracked in to an "Angels dancing on pinheads" type argument, where no objective resolution is possible and they fill the thread with 50 pages of increasingly obscure, point by point rebuttals.

 

[Bolares]

If someone is upfront about not reading all pages, and open to being corrected/informed about things that were already discussed I see no problem with it. Not everyone has the time to read that much about a topic, that should not be a reason they can't interact with a topic they are interested in.

 

[Stephen Shomo]

What is this about?

 

[robus]

People don't have all the time in the world and some of these threads do go on...

When I do that, I generally preface it with an apology if my point has already been made and carry on. Then people can easily skip my contribution if it's redundant.

 

[Parmandur]

Not having read the thread, I can confidentially say "No."

 

[squibbles]

No.

If the thread is more than 5ish pages long, it seems reasonable to me that a poster can only be expected to have read the OP and and the most recent 3 to 5 pages.

Especially in very long threads, where the topic of discussion is often quite different from where it started.

 

[Parmandur]

Yes but they won't and you can't make them. People who skip threads to comment as far less annoying than the two or three people that have side tracked in to an "Angels dancing on pinheads" type argument, where no objective resolution is possible and they fill the thread with 50 pages of increasingly obscure, point by point rebuttals.

The answer to that question is "infinite" because Angels have no material extension.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

A common motiff. You have your 15 page thread, and someone posts "so I skipped the first 15 pages, but here are my thoughts".

I sometimes do that and usually also include an apology if I am repeating other people, especially if I do not have the time at that moment to read everything. And I never post in a volatile thread until I have read to the end. In those threads, how many times do we see people have to go back and edit or delete their comments because they just could not stand to wait until they have read everything and get burned by a moderator comment?

But in general, people just jumping in and giving the third or fifth or twentieth nearly identical reply to the same non-OP post is just irritating and a pet peeve of mine. While some just do not have the time, some are too lazy, or too self-important, to care if what they have to say has already been said.

 

[CleverNickName]

No. The moderators have enough to do already, without having to police who is reading how much of what.