Saracen (the Admin guy, not the Gladiator) and his legendary MegaPosts©™

[moogle]

He has much hate for his keyboard...

Orr he tests out the keyboards for the manufacturers

Saracen.
Yes , definately an asset to the Hexus forums . Keep up the good work -much appreciated

Agreed - \o/ \o/ for Saracen

[mediaboy]

Try Mediaboy lol

But I don't think he will get near Saracen's epic posts.

I win longest ever post though... unless someone beats 40000 characters or so? And it wasn't self-contradictory rubbish. I think.

Saracen gets more intelligent/informed/generally better posts than me though. Downsides of being me is that you can't stay on topic for more than 5 minutes.

Does anyone but me actually bother to read through his posts?

EDIT: 40K was on a post in the question time. I quoted just about everybody and gave opinions. I probably didn't write more than 20-25K of those words. If that. Maybe 15-25K would be more precise.

[Stewart]

Saracen is very intelligent, articulate, etc, but you all seem to think MOAR WURDS = BETTA POSTS.

As in his posts are great simply because they are so long. This is not the case.

Being able to write posts that are well constructed and READABLE is what counts.

Overall he is one of the better posters on the forums, but I think the length of his posts is one of the weaker parts of his writing style, not a strength.

He could say what he says in half the words, and then everyone could actually read what he says, thus all learning something.

Like with me, I can write when I need to, but my spelling (without a spellchecker) is beyond a joke, and I will tend to write my opinions as fact - because they are.

[shadowmaster]

Does anyone but me actually bother to read through his posts?

I skim read them, it would be too time consuming to actually go through them.

[sleepyhead]

Saracen is a robot. His real name is D.A.R.Y.L.

EDIT
It would be most amusing if every once in awhile, when Saracen quotes to correct someone he posts a picture like...



or


SHUT UP FOOL!

[TAKTAK]

I win longest ever post though... unless someone beats 40000 characters or so? And it wasn't self-contradictory rubbish. I think.

Saracen gets more intelligent/informed/generally better posts than me though. Downsides of being me is that you can't stay on topic for more than 5 minutes.

Does anyone but me actually bother to read through his posts?

EDIT: 40K was on a post in the question time. I quoted just about everybody and gave opinions. I probably didn't write more than 20-25K of those words. If that. Maybe 15-25K would be more precise.

i disagree... i have seen many a time where Saracen has multi-posted, and by looking at it, it seems to be because he has massively exceeded the character limit of posts, so if you join the MegaPosts©™ you get a TriMegaPost©™...

[G4Z]

I might as well give him a slap on the back on the back for some of the advice he gave me with my 'So I wrote a letter to my MP' thread.

[VictorE]

The guy deserves recognition and commands respect wonder where he is?? ("Saracen, come out to play-ay"). caption from the film worriors for all you youngsters

[Knoxville]

I've had a MegaPost or two demolish my arguments in Question time before now, there was one debate in particular that got quite heated if my memory serves, I can't remember what it was about now, probably smoking, drugs or religion as those were the threads I had a penchant for wading into back in the days when I wasn't a lurker, Stewart was still Vaul and this was all fields

Either way it doesn't really matter, he's one of a handful of members here that's schooled me over the years with his posts and I appreciate it

[Stewart]

Vaul... bit too argumentative for my tastes.

[Knoxville]

He was a bit wasn't he, never mind aye he's gone now.

[Saracen]

Wow .... I mean, wow.

You lot actually read my drivel? Don't you have lives or anything?

[Saracen]

..... but I think the length of his posts is one of the weaker parts of his writing style, not a strength.

He could say what he says in half the words, and then everyone could actually read what he says, thus all learning something......

Weakness? Actually, I agree .... to a point.

But there's a reason. Too often, in the past, when I trim the wordcount, it's ended up with something I said being taken out of context, made to look like I said something I didn't and then thrown back at me, either in an apparent attempt to get me to justify something I'm supposed to have said but didn't, or refuting a point I hadn't made.

So now I try to word things carefully, and with sufficient caveats, that it makes it harder to do that. It still happens from time to time, but not as often.

Also, a lot of the time, I'm trying to write things in such a way that not only the person it's perhaps directly addressed to makes sense of it and gets my point, but so does anyone else reading it. And the problem there is that while I might have a handle to the person I'm directly addressing, because often they're a member and I have some knowledge of them, the "others" could be someone that's reading as a guest, perhaps having ended up here as a result of a search engine link, and I have NO idea what level to pitch at. So I try to pitch it so that it's got a broad coverage, and of necessity, that ups the wordcount.

I can write concisely when I need to. Having spent much of the last 20 years writing on commission for all sorts of magazines and newspapers, from PC Pro to the Telegraph, I'm used to writing to commission, and to a specified wordcount, and you generally don't get away with waffle because editors will cut it or reject the piece completely. And if you do it too often, you don't get any more work. It has to be concise, precise, on subject and of the specified length. The difference is that you're writing for a known target demographic, and probably in a defined style.

Besides, writing here I can 'let my hair down' a bit and relax, and not work to a wordcount. If I wanted to tightly control wordcount, and write tight, effective prose, I can ..... but I'd do it on commission for a publication and get paid for it.

[Stewart]

A weakness, yes, but I mean it in a positive way.

More often than not you have something worth saying, so the plebs could learn something, but the plebs see a post that goes on as far as the eye can see, and don't bother to read it, thus learning nowt.

Cut the word count, the plebs read the post, everyone's a winner.

I think maybe your previous experience of writing articles, etc, is maybe the 'problem'. You write a post in a thread about, say... jelly, but you write it as if it's an article in the Times about the history of democratic voting rights in Kenya. So it comes across a bit dry.

Time and a place for 25 paragraphs, time and a place for 'bobbies ROFL!'. If that's not too simplistic.

[format]

D.A.R.Y.L.

Ah that film takes me back - " What's a hooker?"

[joshwa]

Yeah but whats the WPM speed?