One of my common lamentations about web site creation & design is that people do not read. You spend all this time creating nice, informational pages, and then you get asked questions that could easily be found by reading those very pages. To help combat this, I have been relentless about keeping pages as short as possible, using as few words as necessary to get across the relevant information. Sometimes people think I'm crazy based on how much time I spend [read: obsess] over web site wording. But, now I have some validation that it's worth spending time to shorten things up.
What users hate most about Web sites in today's InfoWorld discusses web site usability, and the last item on their list is:
War and Peace length: "A common mistake in Web design is to just [convert] a brochure to the Web. But the Web is its own medium, and communication has to change to reach users. Users are known to read 25 percent slower on the screen than on paper, read fewer words and don't like long pages which require scrolling down," she said.
I would never say it was crazy to shorten things when it comes to reading. Of course if I'm interested I will want to be able to find more information. I found the, "right-column blindness" funny because I was thinking about how I end up not seeing the right column on sites a lot because it doesn't fit in my browser window.