How Many Responses is Too Many?
 

I am discouraged when I see a post with 20, 60, 100 or more responses. I figure whatever I have so say will get lost in the shuffle.

Do you find yourself skipping over posts with many responses? How many is too many to get a response from you?

A large number of responses doesn't keep me from adding my two cents. However, it may keep me from reading it in the first place. If I happen to start reading it early on and it interests me, I'll keep following it. But, unless it's something of extreme interest to me (or I'm extremely bored or in dire need of a distraction), I'm not likely to start reading a post that already had 50plus responses.

The trouble with posts that long is that some readers don't read everybody's response and all they do is read the question and then head to the end of the post to put their own response! And then your response gets lost in the shuffle.

I don't skip due to length, as long as I think I can add something that hasn't been mentioned or "seconded." Although I believe in reading the whole post before responding, I may only respond to the original post. Depends on what sort of garbage got started in the middle! Also depends on who's posting. If the thread has gone off on a tangent of insults, mutual compliments, or a cleverness competition, I try to give the OP an answer to his original question. If the question has been answered thoroughly, I may add to the chit-chat. That is what you usually find after a couple dozen posts anyway.

My pet peeve is when people just write what they want, insteading of answering the question. Such as...
Q. Which hotel, A or B?
A. Go to C in near-by town.
Q. Which was your best vaca?
A. Here's a list of everywhere I've ever traveled.
Q. How many is too many?
A. My pet peeve is...
:)

If there are a large number of responses and I haven't looked at the post before, I probably will not. I don't want to read all those responses in one lump. My limit is between 10020, depending on how interesting the subject looks.

I have read and responded to posts that had several hundred responses, but that was as they developed and there was only a few responses when I first looked.

I wish the column we select the messages from included the user name of the person that posted the first message, but I guess that would encourage some people to post a lot of messages just to see their name.

Keith

I read the posted topics that interest me no matter what the number of responses. Sometimes I'll top a '0' post for someone. And yes often I can't resist reading ones that suddenly have 82 responses or whatever just to see what all the fuss is about.

Depends how bored I am at work that day!

If I start the post - the more the merrier :)

On the rest I'm with Suze - depends on how bored I am at work!

I do join from home sometimes, then I read only what I really need to read.

I find that a post with a large number of responses quite often has some sort of controversy going on. Either 2 posters arguing or many people with differing opinions arguing. Of course this isn't always the case but very often it is. So, it depends on how badly I want to read what people are arguing over.

:-)

The threads with arguments can be so entertaining sometimes. Kind of a Fodor's guilty pleasure for me (just like the "What to wear" threads on the Europe board).

Depends on how stupid the responses are.

The irony is stupid threads usually generate multiple responses that tend to contradict one another. Good questions are usually responded to quickly and to the point with great advice.