Do you ever find yourself replying to a topic or starting a new topic with a long thoughtout post only to delete it and "aww screw it"?

I've only done it about a thousand times.

Yeah i've done that a fair few times. Pretty annoying. Mainly i set off explaining something but then ditch the whole idea when i realise people wont understand or give a shit.

Then i try again after a couple of minutes and manage to express the same message in a dozen words.

I never make long thought out posts, so no.

as Ox rarely thinks, the long, though-out post is difficult for him.

As for long posts, go check some of your game reviews, bud. Those suckers get EPIC.

And yes, I cancel posts that are long. Usually because I realize no one would give a shit. I do the same with work emails.

I like short reviews. When I read a review I like to see bullet points not walls of text. Meat and taters, etc.

Yea, I agree for the most part. Sometimes when reading reviews on hardware and I'm torn between two competing products, I'll seek out the longer reviews. But overall, short reviews for the win.

Toms Hardware -> skip to "Conclusion". hhaha

Seeing as I often have eons of time on my hands at work (today is looking like such a day), I don't mind reading longer reviews or writings. In a case of a review I always skip ahead to the scores/benchmarks first and THEN, if they look promising, I read the entire shabang. If the conclusions is that the game/book/hardware/Russian mail order bride sucks (ok maybe in the latter case that isn't ALWAYS bad ) I don't bother with the full review.

Satis, were you referring to my loverants re: epic game reviews or Derf's jade-o-rific 'reviews'?

I use metacritic alot but only to read the bottom 5 reviews I figure it's more more likely for me to get an idea of quality based on negative reviews.

heh... I concur on skipping to conclusion on Tom's Hardware. Sometimes I'll read the whole article if it's got interesting content, but most of the time it's 3 pages of setup, 5 pages of the same freakin' tests they've done 100 times before, then a conclusion. Why bother with the rest?

As for Ox and his mega-blabbers... I was really more referring to your occasional desire to write epic posts, though Derf does that as well from time to time. It doesn't bother me... if I care I 'll read it, if not, I may skim it.

For product reviews, I find a lot of negative reviews to be really helpful. Some are just trolling, so you've got to take them with a grain of salt, but they're much more useful than the reviews overflowing with sugar.

Really good review system is New Egg.

Yea, I read reviews on Newegg and Amazon. I can usually get a good feel for some item's quality that way. They've saved me making expensive mistakes on more than one occasion.