Getting to the Point/Long Winded Discussions

Some of them are so similar I suspect that the same person is writing all of them.

1. If it's a long winded post, I generally won't bother reading it.

2. If it's short and to the point, I actually might respond to the post.

3. Also I generally will never post on a thread, unless the OP has made at least two or more post on A2K.

4. It can be one post on two different threads or two post on the same thread.

5. I just have to make sure that it's not a one and done poster that's never going to be heard from again.

The paragraphs thing is generally a function of typing on the phone. A2K is anything but mobile-friendly, so newbies tend to not see if they are making carriage returns, etc. They're folks who are often used to type, hit enter, type. Here, you need to hit enter 2x to make a paragraph.

Longer posts may be written once and then copy/pasted to various advice websites (such as Quora) in the hopes of getting more or faster answers or both.

And finally, long-windedness tends to come with the relationship territory. Posters may be unsure of which details matter, so they provide everything. Or they haven't told anyone until now, and it just comes flooding out.

Or, they just want to annoy you.

It is hard to break down things like relationships because while they are easy to understand outside of the relationship the entire relationship has a bunch of #@$$#$@#$ within it.

It is like writing programming code. Take "hello world". Just to write that from scratch I have to probably write four or five lines just to get "hello world printed". Imagine how many lines of code was written for everything on this forum to appear the way it is.

That is how you should view matters of relationships.
You see a simple problem with a logical answer but
The person talking about the #$@$@$$ has to go into details.

Years ago I ran a program for the chronically mentally ill. The staff, who were young B.A .level employees, had to document interactions with clients.

I did a training with the staff. I wrote up a fictitious interaction with a fictitious client. I threw in every detail. Their job was to document this interaction, only including what was relevant and important.

I was shocked. Only one of my staff got it right. Of the eight, most included irrelevant information, and left out important stuff. In fact one guy, (who was not too bright) included information that was not even on the interaction.

You are guilty of the same action. You choose to not respond to a pressing issue of an individual simply because you've deemed their presentation as unworthy of your time.

Says a whole lot more about you than it does about the poster.

Many such posts are also not worth my time.

Years ago I ran a program for the chronically mentally ill. The staff, who were young B.A .level employees, had to document interactions with clients.

I do not know the areas of studies but the reality is that many Associates are now Masters today. Why? They have you in college taking up courses which has nothing to do with the actual work and do not even attempt to help you afterwards finding any positions of employment. All to pump money into the college system. For example I took my "science requirement" but when they removed an "exit exam" they just had to add Biology as the defacto science requirement and would even argue with me that my CS class would not count.
To make matters worst these idiots gave us this "alternative Biology" course and not the actual course because students complained about it. Which had us do things on the computer using flash experiments rather then the real stuff.
I feel insulted because rather then just make a course using the old books, and allowing students to rent those books ( or rent and buy with additional payments ), they made us buy tacky print-outs which we had to put inside a binder we had to buy separate.

..........

The problem of what you did was with the "mentally disabled" and that is too broad a spectrum to determines a persons problem. It is like law school basically. With law their are many directions you could go into. However you could bring about anybody to court for just about anything at all. That is if you know the proper procedures and if you could get away with it inside of the court room.

The Mental disabled could be
1. A person who wants to be listed as such for a variety of reasons.
2. A person who actually needs help whether or not they know it or not.
3. A person who proven they have or had problems and are there for X reasons.

Like my cousin went through a lot of nonsense ( not going into it ) where he just decided to go to a mental hospital. Nobody made him go at all. The truth is that he felt unappreciated for his actions. He just learn that women are selfish and not to look for anything from them, even if they are his relatives.

I could break that down into a thesis or essay, rather then what I wrote. As with law I could go into so many directions. That is why you got those answers.

...........

If you had said the students " I want you to take the information I have given you and just write down what is currently important, but remember not everything I wrote is relevant" maybe you would have gotten more better answers.

Writing what is important is opinionated because everything could be considered important as with law. Like the scene of a _____ or when you hunt ____. You wake up and ask yourself why is there trash on this street and then realize it was some kind of celebration yesterday.

Re writing coherently: many people online can’t write a coherent paragraph or two… for whatever reasons. Call it a failure of the educational systems.

Many people aren’t familiar enough with various text-editing Apps to take their streamofconconscious babble and turn into something readable.

Re long-windedness: many people online, particularly ones with troublesome relationship problems, aren’t able to write coherently about the problems. Their in emotional turmoil. A little sympathy here might go a long way.

Then there’s the issue of many who have very little self-awareness

If an OP has all of the abilities to write coherently, edit using a text-editor, keep their emotions together and have self-awareness…then they wouldn’t be here seeking answers from us armchair psychologists, would they?

Good point, Ragman. But I also understand where Pheonix is coming from. Run-on sentences, no punctuation or capitalization, no paragraph returns... makes reading extremely difficult for some of us. When I encounter posts like that, I usually skip them as I find them painful to get through. No offence to the writer - it's just what my eyes and brain can handle.

Yes, we could recommend that they become familiar with the precepts of a writing style manual.

Exactly. Also, in response to NeptuneBlue: Just because someone has a problem
( ALL human beings have problems) it is not incumbent on everyone else to attempt to solve them.

You have made an excellent point, Ragman. That relates to the incident that I wrote about taking a lot of extraneous verbiage, and turning the information into something readable and understandable.

The fact that my staff were college graduates, from different schools, says a lot about the educational system in the U.S. I think that writing coherently and succinctly is one of the most important things that young people need to learn to succeed in life.I things that the colleges (and most likely the elementary and high schools) are failing these people.