The way I see it, your role as a poster is to provide interesting material for others to read, such that they read it through. If they want to read it through, chances are that it's contributed to the discussion in a positive way. Using this basic test, one can determine whether or not a post is worth reading in its entirety (because that's what this is really about):
A quality post shows the poster's insight toward the topic.
Basically what this means is that (assuming a poster has any insight at all) if he can articulate his insight to readers, and demonstrate his intelligence, he has succeeded in making a good post. The fact of the matter is that good logical reasoning, reading, and writing, are what lead to a good post, and are even more important than actual knowledge of the topic. An intelligent poster knows when and what to post. The lesson we should learn from this is that these skills are the things we should be thinking about when we make a post.
Am I really making sense? Am I being helpful? Someone who can CAD with the best of them is useless at helping a rookie to CAD if he can't make a readable post, and it really can be as simple as that.
Ken asked "How can you tell," and that's what I'll go into for a second here. Let me explain my reasoning: First of all, we need to admit that there are posters out there that we really like to listen to, and conversely, those whose posts we couldn't care less about, based on experience from reading their previous stuff. I personally triage posts for skimming based on a few points:
- Going off-topic without good cause does not show insight. If you can't show your ability to reason or develop an idea, save me the trouble of reading the rest your post.
- Agreeing, disagreeing, or saying that you don't know is useless. Nobody cares what you have to say unless you're actually offering something useful or helpful.
- The inability to spell or form coherent phrases does not show insight, and serves as a way for me to skim and decide whether reading a post is really worth my time. Much as we hate to admit it, this is the best indicator of whether a post is not worth reading through.
- An argument is always good, but unfortunately, many of the people on this forum are not mature enough to participate intelligently in one. This makes threads get out of hand, or results in people trying to lock perfectly good ones. So while argumentative posts are not bad per se, they can mess up threads, making them pseudo-bad-quality.
- As it turns out, expository essay skills really help. If you can state your position and then support it later if anyone cares to read, you've made a good post. As such, there's nothing necessarily wrong with "the normal 2 sentence quick replies" we are seeing. In fact, chances are I'll read them, which, as I theorized at the start, is the whole point.
- A new problem in this forum is what I call rep-bait. These are fluffy posts meant to appease one or more individuals in order to garner rep points. My stance on rep has always been that it holds little water in reality, but since not everyone shares my enlightened view, a lower quality reply is more and more likely these days.
- Rep-bait is closely linked to all the esoteric discussion and inside jokes that go on between a few individuals on the forum. They actually ruin the experience for everyone else. "But Jon," you say. "Those people have lots of rep points." Yes they do, but they're having their own little party on the forums. Do you think everyone knows what a JVN is? Edit: I should note that this isn't a shot at anyone, and that I've probably done this a few times too, before someone takes it the wrong way. Pfft.
Anyway, think about your audience and try to get them to read your whole post. If you do that, you've probably made a quality one.