Question: It can be difficult to navigate the magnitude of answers available on certain types of posts. These posts usually span multiple pages and by definition hide a lot of information. 

While reading all the answers is a great way to understand the issues, there are posts with 5+ pages of answers. There is no way that most users have read all the answers (Some? Maybe), but most people want to be more efficient when going through these types of posts. 

You don't read a scientific paper first. You read the abstract continue from there. What I am suggesting is an "abstract" for these confusing, and/or controversial posts.

From the last 2 months, these are the posts that come to mind that would benefit from an "abstract" of some kind

* [Upvotes on questions will now be worth the same as upvotes on answers](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/391250/upvotes-on-questions-will-now-be-worth-the-same-as-upvotes-on-answers?noredirect=1#comment742785_391250)
* [Update: an agreement with Monica Cellio](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/340906/update-an-agreement-with-monica-cellio?cb=1)

**Is there a better way to navigate through all the answers and confusing parts of the post in a way that will allow others to understand the post and answers more clearly?** 

For clarity, this would not apply for your everyday Meta posts. This is only for those posts that produce multiple pages of answers. That heavily reduces which posts this would apply to.

Answer: 
Well - these are exceptional times.

Under very normal circumstances - I suspect there would be *significantly* less answers, and we'd be a little more aggressive over pruning non answers (as hard as it is to believe!).

In short, this isn't *normal*. 

I feel meta does poorly as a soapbox - and essentially that's roughly what a lot of these posts were. On the other hand - there was *no other place* we could discuss this and (while folks might be shocked to hear this), we ended up taking as light a hand as possible on moderation. 

Everyone has an opinion on hot issues - as evidenced by... well lots of answers and comments. 

These are not *simple* issues and there's a lot that I suspect folks can't and won't share. In the greater scheme of things - you're going to want to read the answers because the issue *matters* to you. 

In the grander scheme of things - you'd find that a lot of what happened in the last few months is useful in our collective memory (how so depends on where you stand). Its certainly had an effect on the relationship between the communities and the company. I suspect though that in the longer run, most folks wouldn't notice or remember individual posts.

And I certainly hope we can avoid more of this. Its been an 'interesting' 3 months.
Based on an answer that I received (a comment), I was able to completely revamp my "solution" to this issue. No new tools needed as the tools are already there; however, it could be more streamlined.

Solution
========

Streamlined "Summary Posts"

I was made aware that the Monica post caused such an issue in the community that people had a hard time understanding the issues and detail at hand. This led to a [summary post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334399/summing-up-the-main-issues-the-story-so-far) being created. This summary post can actually go into so much more detail than a simple "categorization" that I suggested above. 

It could categorize, but maybe that isn't the best idea for each post; maybe it is?? But it can also explain additional details that people might not understand, such as what the Teacher's Lounge is (for this particular example), timelining, or anything else.

Once this "summary post" idea is taken up, the community could create a basic idea of what should and shouldn't go into these posts. Where exceptions could occur. How the community members that don't understand could ask for new details that others could create a full answer for. What type of answers should be CWs. And so on.

Why "Streamlined"
=================

**Edit: This deals more with how the community can create guidelines for these types of summary posts.**

It is important that these summary posts are only for special types of posts that generate large amounts of answers, confusion, or other possible issues. The idea of creating these summary posts would take some time. Five to seven answers is probably way too low to need a summary, but eventually, a point of some kind (confusion, # of answers, etc...) is met and a summary post could be created. 

The creation of the post could be so simple as to just indicate that it is a summary post for the said post or posts (possibly templated or following a format), and the community could add answers or update answers through CW.

Also, you will see in the linked summary post that it ran into issues of being a duplicate. Well, after the community decides on how to deal with these types of summary posts, then there should be far fewer issues.

Summary
=======

So a possible solution to this issue is to use Summary Posts that use the current infrastructure of SE ... "Questions" and Answers. There might be a need to streamline these types of "Questions" but there, technically, doesn't need to be any new tools created. Just a new process or community guideline.