Why do some campaign members posting essay?

[EarnOnVictor]

But how about this one, it's a challenge reading this post.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5456632.msg63389484#msg63389484

Yes, there are many in the gambling section, most of them Stake, as the OP said. Another example would be junder, which I've been talking about recently. You can see that making the written rubbish too long can earn them a bonus and that's why you see so many in that campaign writing long posts that at first glance look coherent but without basically saying anything meaningful.

Write whatever you want in your style and stop crucifying people for writing so much. I don't even know the sensible reason for this topic only for the fun of it as some might write a few lines as possible and still make no sense, while some might write much and all making sense, and vice versa. So it is unfair to say that those who are writing much are all writing rubbish. You can only treat cases individually. In case you don't know, the topics and replies that are much could carry a lot of semantic load and I know that this is not only good for the writers' improvement but also for the campaign the writer campaigns for.

Some of you do not care about the campaigns that pay you but for the money, while others care about the two and deliver as they should, even more. What I wouldn't be happy about is writing long lines with no meaning, that is so bad and such errors must be corrected. But if the wording is good and coherent, then let it be. As for "junder", I haven't read his posts but it is not a must that you earn merit on the forum before you are considered good and only an unwise/partial person wouldn't know that the merit system is not perfect. The guy, as I check now, writes mostly on the gambling section that fetches almost no merits, so what do you expect?

Mind you, it is not all quality posts that will attract merits, most are unappreciated. So leave people to how they naturally can write but correct them or point their attention to where you feel they are doing things wrongly and stop being perfect.

[1714968611]

1714968611

[Woodie]

Sorry about the title. While reading some posts, I noticed that some campaign participants seem to be posting essays. Have you noticed the same, or is it just me? If you also notice this, do you think it's healthy for the forum?

This long essay writing could have come in as a result of forum requesting for quality posts and other supporting services such as SMAS BLACKLIST that existed a few years ago and to avoid being listed there... users went for essays to stay off their radar  

But all in all, this misconception of long essays is equal to a quality post is still debatable as a simple word or two to a question can stand as quality afaik....but I guess some users want to stand out and grind for merit (most obvious reason)

Other reason for essays is because its easy for a manager to pick you if you are into Signature Campaigns and just makes it easy to sieve out from the one two liners... provided grammar, sentence construction is above average and their is actual sharing of knowledge/information in those essays.

[Peanutswar]

To express their ideas, and suggestions and base them on their experience.
If you think sharing information that benefits people who read this and takes a lot of text or words to fulfil their questions they dont hesitate to give a lot of their knowledge to help other members of the community. Its your free will to give information that's the forums for. But make sure the contents are related to the discussion some posts have tons of words and tl;dr but doesn't related to the topic just their benefit is to post to be counted on their signature campaigns. Make it clear and understandable i guess its enough to prevent having a long post.

[Sandra_hakeem]

Don't worry, even if you didn't mention Stakes' signature campaign participants, we all know that you're referring to this users.

That's absolutely true... Some campaign requirements are too demanding... I seen a couple of crap lately - from stakes most especially... So I decided to look up their requirements and I was convinced. Sometimes, they go off point, all in a bid to make the post voluminous - I don't know why OP doesn't read to check for stuffs like quality and substance...I also realized that most of their participants are having bulky post as compared to merit ratio... I think it's basically for that reason.
For the genuine ones; threads, guides etc ... We all know.

Sandra 🧑‍🦰

[Smartvirus]

Sorry about the title. While reading some posts, I noticed that some campaign participants seem to be posting essays. Have you noticed the same, or is it just me? If you also notice this, do you think it's healthy for the forum?

What posts does constitute an Essay to you?
From the comments that precedes the thread, I find long posts to fall for that category but, I don’t find anything wrong or not okay with having to make a clear narrative on a subject.

It doesn’t have to be about you being a campaign participants to come up with this sort of post and to be frank, you would hardly find campaign participants coming up with long narrative posts especially, when they are about meeting up with post quota.

Short or few lined posts often count for spamming or low effort created content and with that, users tend to do the most to have a clear narrative on a subject to avoid confusion and hope it constitutes to post quality.

[Asuspawer09]

Sorry about the title. While reading some posts, I noticed that some campaign participants seem to be posting essays. Have you noticed the same, or is it just me? If you also notice this, do you think it's healthy for the forum?

I guess an essay or long post is not that important, the important thing is you understand and get the point of the post right? It doesnt really matter if the post is long, on the other hand, that could be a positive thing I guess since you could include more details on the post and probably explain it better with just a short post, but it is just going to depend on how you're going to see the long post but for sure it wasn't going to be a negative thing as long as it still has a good thought.

Having a detailed reply for sure might be a good thing for the forum unless they are just typing some nonsense on their post just to make it longer that is where things could easily be a bad thing and probably you could report it for spamming, if it is just nonsense posting. I mean long post does really mean that it is going to be a quality post, and its better to have a short quality post than having a long but low-quality posting.

[KingsDen]

Sorry about the title. While reading some posts, I noticed that some campaign participants seem to be posting essays. Have you noticed the same, or is it just me? If you also notice this, do you think it's healthy for the forum?

What posts does constitute an Essay to you?
From the comments that precedes the thread, I find long posts to fall for that category but, I don’t find anything wrong or not okay with having to make a clear narrative on a subject.

It doesn’t have to be about you being a campaign participants to come up with this sort of post and to be frank, you would hardly find campaign participants coming up with long narrative posts especially, when they are about meeting up with post quota.

Short or few lined posts often count for spamming or low effort created content and with that, users tend to do the most to have a clear narrative on a subject to avoid confusion and hope it constitutes to post quality.

TBH, I don't read those wall of texts, especially when it is not coming from someone I know too well is a very knowledgeable in Bitcoin. I have tried it several times and regretted at last. Some of those lengthy posts are full of repetitions and non connected narrations which could easily be called off topic.

In most cases what the users wish to say ended in the first few lines but the poster will deliberately stretch the write up to look like a gigantic article. There are people that writes such as habit, such as Jay juan, franky1, LUCKYFLY1 and others, and I read their posts. But recently, it's becoming a norm in the forum.

[Mpamaegbu]

~

But how about this one, it's a challenge reading this post.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5456632.msg63389484#msg63389484

While I still maintain it's not a "Stakes" specific problem with "epistles" as replies from users in that campaign as many are alluding, I admit that I've also run into users who aren't on that campaign writing epistles as posts. Some aren't even in any campaigns, yet they write in such a manner. I guess it's a writing technique for people who write that way. For me it's boring reading through such lengthy posts, especially the one whose link is quoted here. Brevity should be top most on the minds of users. We shouldn't bore the community with verbosity.

[amishmanish]

A few years back, this was a pretty respected practice because good posters weren't so easy to find on the forum. There were some who exclusively wrote essays, and good ones at that.

Now, looks like inflation and the tech downturn has given people a lot of time as well as motivation. On top of that, it has become far too easy to write a lot without saying much.

What i notice though is that there are fewer novel topics of discussion coming up. Its mostly the same things being talked about that we used to argue since the days of Segwit. Jamie Dimon anyone?? LOL.. I maybe wrong on this as I am just finding my way back to the forum after some time. Maybe I haven't been to the exciting nooks yet.

[OgNasty]

Don't worry, even if you didn't mention Stakes' signature campaign participants, we all know that you're referring to this users.

This user's post also seems like an essay: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=885934

I don't want to mention names because there are many. Most of them are probably coming from stake campaign. It seems like some of them are trying to make a post longer when it can be done with short post.

Some signature campaigns (like Stake's for example) have requirements on the number of characters that have to be in a post.  So while they may have a very simple answer that could be given in a few words, they are incentivized with money to make their posts a little longer in order to reach the character requirements that have been set.  I'm not familiar with how widespread this is with other campaigns, but perhaps that explains why you singled out Stake. 

[348Judah]

Sorry about the title. While reading some posts, I noticed that some campaign participants seem to be posting essays. Have you noticed the same, or is it just me? If you also notice this, do you think it's healthy for the forum?

Posting essay or not is not what is against the forum rules, the question is that are they spamming, trolling, or doing plagiarism, if not then what they are doing is not worth a punishable offense, the last aspect I may like to talk about is that if the content of what they are posting is off topic, then all you could do is to just report them to the moderator, the last thing to completely avoid them is putting them on ignore.

[Rikafip]

I'm not familiar with how widespread this is with other campaigns, but perhaps that explains why you singled out Stake. 

Afaik, all signature campaigns character quota requirement (if not all, then vast majority) so Stake is not an expection here. The reason he singled out Stake is probably because of their tendency to attract spammers and shitposters due their low payment and high weekly quota. And I guess its easier to hide the shitpost if you write a wall of text, or at least that's what they think.

[Zigabel]

Sorry about the title. While reading some posts, I noticed that some campaign participants seem to be posting essays. Have you noticed the same, or is it just me? If you also notice this, do you think it's healthy for the forum?

Some campaign require you make such long post because they require you have not less than a certain number of words on your post for it to be considered quality enough to be counted for payment and so the campaign participants try to put up such long post so they meet the requirements and also get paid, some other posters believe the longer the post the better the quality because even campaign managers more like count and keep long post than they will do with short post except those short post are straight to the point and have got good quality.

But this doesn't mean length of post means good quality as some lenghty post might just be bluffing and unnecessary usage of words which could be avoided but then the quest for "quality post" makes people still post regardless.

[EarnOnVictor]

Don't worry, even if you didn't mention Stakes' signature campaign participants, we all know that you're referring to this users.

This user's post also seems like an essay: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=885934

I don't want to mention names because there are many. Most of them are probably coming from stake campaign. It seems like some of them are trying to make a post longer when it can be done with short post.

Some signature campaigns (like Stake's for example) have requirements on the number of characters that have to be in a post.  So while they may have a very simple answer that could be given in a few words, they are incentivized with money to make their posts a little longer in order to reach the character requirements that have been set.  I'm not familiar with how widespread this is with other campaigns, but perhaps that explains why you singled out Stake. 

I think they should leave the Stake campaign out of this, there are many posters that write in such a way that carries a semantic load and not a summary like some people would want. Summary or not, it is at the discretion of the author, and me personally, I always try to limit what I post even though I have a lot to say. This is because it might be boring the reader if it is too long, but that doesn't mean that if I write more it will still not have more meaning, only that I might leave the rest which I need to discuss on another day when I visit the topic with a similar reply to be made.

It is a free world here and even with the Stake campaign, the campaigner would be paid so far it is up to 150 characters and I believe that should be barely two lines, so nothing is compulsory here. It could also be that some people like writing, just like me, and want to effectively express themselves in what they convey to people. I absolutely see nothing wrong in that even as it is better for campaigns as it shows they selected the right person(s) that can represent them well and not dullrads.

[oktana]

The main reason I think is that they want to sound good as if they really do know what they are saying. Sometimes they want merit but receive none. One thing they may not have paid attention to is that it is one thing to write a long content and another for it to make sense to the reader. If you check around, you’ll see simple and straightforward forward posts which receives merit. It’s not about lengthy content, let there be some life in what you’re saying.

[snipie]

The main reason I think is that they want to sound good as if they really do know what they are saying. Sometimes they want merit but receive none. One thing they may not have paid attention to is that it is one thing to write a long content and another for it to make sense to the reader. If you check around, you’ll see simple and straightforward forward posts which receives merit. It’s not about lengthy content, let there be some life in what you’re saying.

I don't understand people who wrote a long text to reply to a simple sentence like I don't understand why politicians talk a lot without saying (or doing) anything.
It is normal to have a long text while you are quoting several people, talking about complex issue, explaining how Bitcoin works for example..etc
Sometimes I wonder if they are using AI to generate the text and paraphrasing it to avoid being detected? Since that already happened before.
Having minimal words requirement has nothing to do with long text since most signature campaigns ask generally to pass around hundred of words which is the equivalent of three or four lines..
Long text are annoying to read and gets more appreciation by the others regardless of how empty they were inside, that's why some people keep doing that intentionally.

[oktana]

The main reason I think is that they want to sound good as if they really do know what they are saying. Sometimes they want merit but receive none. One thing they may not have paid attention to is that it is one thing to write a long content and another for it to make sense to the reader. If you check around, you’ll see simple and straightforward forward posts which receives merit. It’s not about lengthy content, let there be some life in what you’re saying.

I don't understand people who wrote a long text to reply to a simple sentence like I don't understand why politicians talk a lot without saying (or doing) anything.
It is normal to have a long text while you are quoting several people, talking about complex issue, explaining how Bitcoin works for example..etc
Sometimes I wonder if they are using AI to generate the text and paraphrasing it to avoid being detected? Since that already happened before.
Having minimal words requirement has nothing to do with long text since most signature campaigns ask generally to pass around hundred of words which is the equivalent of three or four lines..
Long text are annoying to read and gets more appreciation by the others regardless of how empty they were inside, that's why some people keep doing that intentionally.

Long text aren’t always annoying to read though. Trust me that you can read content that is well arranged and punctuated and enjoy it. One of the things that discourages me from reading long texts is when the OP doesn’t use paragraphs.

For content that has 6 paragraphs, it’s easier and tempting to at least start reading, but reading the other paragraphs depends on how good the first one was. Paragraphs also makes a write up to not feel so long as it actually is. And sadly, things like this, they don’t consider.

[Rabata]

Sorry about the title. While reading some posts, I noticed that some campaign participants seem to be posting essays. Have you noticed the same, or is it just me? If you also notice this, do you think it's healthy for the forum?

Long posts can have various purposes. As some think long posts make their post quality look better. Some people think that long posts are better viewed by campaign managers. Again it may be that they can also accept it as a good way to transfer merit. Different people may have different motives. Actually there is no dearth of news channels in present age if one needs to read long post then they can get their knowledge after those news.

What I think effective in forums is that if a member is able to convey what he wants to understand in short form then there is no need to go long. Moreover, not everyone has the desire to wear a long post. There are some things that cannot be explained in detail. The point is that it is a member's perception. Not everything can be solved with restrictions. It is not difficult if everyone tries individually.

[Myleschetty]

If the long post is on topic and makes sense I don't consider it to be an essay but if the poster is just beating around the bush just to make a long post to attract merit because some merit sources believe long posts deserve to be merited then i consider such post to be an essay.

[UmerIdrees]

Sorry about the title. While reading some posts, I noticed that some campaign participants seem to be posting essays. Have you noticed the same, or is it just me? If you also notice this, do you think it's healthy for the forum?

Seems like people are never happy in any way. When someone writes one or two liners, we say that he is posting too short a post etc and when someone is writing a short of essay, we are again complaining about it.  

I would say that it's hard to please everyone but to be honest, if a writer is posting all the one-liners, he is a shit poster and if he is making all posts like an essay, then again he is not being natural and doing it for some purposes like a signature requirement or whatever.

The best ones are those whom you will find the mixers of long and short posts as that is close to the natural habit of writing.