I use to read every post I saw, until I noticed that people were just saying the same things over and over and over. At this point, there are really only a handful of people here that I respect and listen to.

Normally I'll sit down and read the whole thing, unless the thread itself is massive or the subject just doesn't interest me in the least. If the thread's huge (around five pages), I start skimming for the main points of everything unless I kept up with the thread from the beginning. Then that's a bit of a different story.

I read, but not cause I have nothing better to do! I only read what I am interested in though (i.e. courses im taking, greek mythology, ENDERS GAME!)

No way, I only read the really long things if the topic REALLY interests me. Other than that I'll just skip it or maybe skim through it.

I dislike reading long posts. There can only be so many topics about homosexuality and creationism, and most people who write extremely long posts are not organized enough to consolidate their thoughts into a succinct summary. They usually end up saying the same thing thirty different ways.

Usually, the insight brought up on those topics aren't anything particularly innovative, and if they are, the next twenty people quote and attack them. Those are fun to read.

I skim and when I find something interesting, I tend to go back and read the whole post from the beginning.

Depending on whether it strikes my interest or not determines whether I will not only respond, or even read it in the first place. I usually am at least half interested to read some of it.

Yes, I tend to read long posts if they're formatted and written coherently.

On the other hand, I personally like to keep my posts short and to the point. Like this one.

If the topic seems interesting, I only read the first few posts from each person debating. After that, it tends to get repetitive and tedious.

I like my posts like my milk. Skim.

I usually try to read every post in a thread if I haven't read it before. I only skip posts that write a few hundred words without pressing the 'enter' key, since that's really just a pain.

Usually what will happen is that I'll see an interesting post on the most recent page that makes we want to read the rest of the thread to find out what happened to lead up to that post. And sometimes it's worth it to read insanely long posts, like Seris' long bitchy post last year, which was pretty amusing. And reading up to the post, the person who it was aimed at didn't really even deserve it. :p

Heh. Heh. Heh.

I try and read every post in a thread, but sometimes it gets difficult. Really difficult. See, I have this problem where I can't read and comprehend well unless something is written in proper English. I have trouble comprehending the underlying point. Unfortunately, due to this, I have to skip over a lot of posts sometimes - or I misunderstand them and respond poorly.

But yea, sometimes, GFFers have interesting things to say. I try and read everything carefully. But when it comes to philosophical debates and/or any other general opinion, I tend to not read entire essays unless I'm actually engaged in the debate myself.

I read...everything
if its massive..i think its well worth my time

I read every post unless it' gotten to the point that a particular person has said the exact same thing 4 or more times in a row and then I just start skimming their posts if they're more than 5 paragraphs long.