<p>I am rather new to the .SE sites (started with math.SE and then expanded to CV) but during these last three months I had some time on my hands and I have answered a fair number of questions (93 in math.SE and 63 in CV), which can constitute an indicative, if not representative ...sample. This sample tells me that my answers tend to be long, and certainly "against" .SE guidelines that advise for rather short and to-the-point answers.  </p>

<p>After some reflection I think this is possibly due to three reasons -two of them are personality traits, the other one may be defensible: <strong>a)</strong> It is the teacher in me, <strong>b)</strong> "I like to hear the sound of my own voice" (I read this as an offered explanation for long answers in some math.SE post) and <strong>c)</strong> The question touches a more general issue that I believe is worth elaborating on in order to put the specific question in perspective, something that I know from off-line experience that makes its answer more useful to the person who asks the question (deeper and more comprehensive understanding).  </p>

<p>A recent example is <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/72613/subscript-notation-in-expectations/72614#72614">this answer of mine</a>: the OP asked about the meaning of subscripts attached to the symbol of the Expectations operator. Since this phenomenon appears when more random variables are involved, I decided essentially to also answer "another question" -"when more r.v.'s are involved and there is no subscript in the expectations operator, what do we do?". I believe that in this way my answer stands as a more complete treatment of this aspect of scientific notation, it permits the OP and any other reader to understand that the more general question is "when more than one r.v. then what?" -and to have an answer on this last question (which being more general is bound to pop up in more circumstances). But this approach <em>doubled</em> the length of my answer, and strictly speaking, half of the answer was, if not off-topic, at least off-question, as the latter was actually asked.</p>

<p>I think it would be valuable to hear from more experienced members of the community about the matter. As I said, most probably there are "rather questionable" personality traits that are pushing me towards this answering approach, but I honestly believe that it also has something to offer to the readers. </p>

<p>I would really appreciate any thoughts on that.</p>
