Just FYI: my next month or so is all about gutting the fuck out of my manuscript. I have so far reduced the first 30 pages to 15 and it is definitely benefitting. Quality is not correlated with length.
If I see that I'm spending, say, 900 words on responding to someone, I might just use that as a reason to cut down on my own words. My hope is that it discourages the shortest and the longest of replies. Neither are particularly insightful, and neither look particularly good with a word counter.
"Brevity is the soul of wit." - William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, sc. ii. "I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter." - Blaise Pascal
No doubt, but it's a very easy hypothesis to test. My guess is that we won't be able to discern a difference, but I'm curious if it will feel any different. BTW, it was a real effort not to just respond with: "That's what she said." :) It wasn't the counter that made me reconsider though.