As you probably know, my answers tend to be long. I call them verbose, others call them unending walls of text.
I'm not keen on answering to just the person who asked the original question. I write my answers in the hope that others, either interested in the subject, or encountering the same or similar problem, find it useful. This is a major factor making my answers long.
Do you have an opinion as to what a preferred length of an answer is, in practice? Is a long wall of text a hindrance, even if it contains useful information?
Certain questions seem to pop up at regular intervals, which might indicate that the Search option on this site is not used as often as it might; perhaps old threads are not read that often.
(Moderators/webmaster: any statistics on search? Or on how often older threads are read -- especially those not visible by default thread view settings?)
A devil's advocate might say that this indicates short and to the point answers would be optimal, because longer answers do not reach a wide enough audience to warrant any extended answers; limiting ourselves to the minimal domain defined by the original question would be preferable.
Opinions?