Are TL;DR answers useful?

Question

I've noticed a trend lately towards multi-page, super-comprehensive answers. I have a few issues with this.

First, if such a huge answer is really necessary, the question was too broad and general in the first place, and should have been flagged as such.

Second, this is a Q&A site, not an Encyclopedia site. Chances are the "real answer" that the OP wanted is buried somewhere within the mega-answer, but the mega-answer reads like a Wikipedia page on a US President.

For example, to answer this question, do we really need Lamp 1 on/off examples of a generic bus architecture? Difference between OBDII and CAN

Or this. It really boils down to controlling torque and increasing friction. So does EVERY POSSIBLE friction increasing tactic have to be listed? What is the most efficient method of getting your car unstuck from snow?

Discussion? Am I way off base here?

Answer 1

tl;dr: yes, sometimes long answers are useful and might be necessary.

Case in point: my answer on the question about effective compression.

If you reread the original question, you can see that there are several things going on there:

1. The OP has the basic question of why does this motor require higher octane but not this one?
2. After a little reading, it's clear that there's a reasonably complicated approximation going on, clouding the issue.
3. After a little more reading, you realize that the OP is using a poor approximation, leading to flawed conclusions.
4. The OP seems to be in an information gathering mode, seeking further background on a complex subject.

Given all that, it would be super rude for me to just say "your effective compression approximation is wrong" and move on.

So, what I did was to write up a bunch of background, arrive at some general guidelines and then compare the original approximation with one that I feel is better. The OP and the community seem to agree that I did a pretty good job (which I appreciate) and I think I've helped the OP as well as others who are interested in the same subject. Remember: a good post is a better Google target.

Moving away from this specific example, remember that we are talking about cars now. No two cars are identical. Some cars that seem like they should be on paper can have wildly different issues (e.g., suspension geometry questions). We often have to give longer answers just to cover the bases. The fact that this also provides reference material for people writing future answers is that much more useful.

Obviously, a short urgent question like "help, help I'm on fire, what do I do?!" isn't the best candidate for a Tome of All Knowledge. For those, shorter is obviously better.

Answer 2

I disagree completely.

My favourite answers are the ones that have a quick summary, and then the full answer so I can read further into the specific pieces that interest me most.

One of the points of Stack Exchange is to have the answer here - not in various places. So sometimes the questions need to be extensive. Some over on one of the sites I moderate have hit the character limit, which is up around 30,000 characters, I think. And they have gained an immense amount of upvotes, implying many people find them useful. An example here!

The two examples you have given aren't typical examples however - the snow one was aimed at providing a list (not common for SE, but valid in this instance I think) and the OBDII question would probably work just as well without all those examples, but it is fine with them.