It depends on quality of the thread, honestly. If you're really interested in the thread, you'll just kind of naturally trim through the fat (people going "haha retard" "wow this is one bad cow" can be the first couple pages sometimes) and find relevant updates/insightful posts. I read both the entire Jonathan Yaniv thread and the entire John Bulla thread in one sitting cause I just found them that gripping- find the threads that catch you like that, and read them entirely. Don't try and read threads that don't really grip you even if they're featured or otherwise- maybe break those threads up into multiple sessions worth of reading or watch a YouTube video on that cow/read ED or other resources as the poster above said.
If the OP is really, really good (see Schofield thread, Yaniv thread, NoodlesandBeef thread, although the latter two aren't that long), It's usually okay to just read the OP and then the most recent pages, especially if the OP gets edited constantly. There's a search feature on the site if you're confused about something in a thread and can be specific enough to find relevant results, or you could ask in the thread for clarity if you really had to- no shame in it so long as you're not doing it every other post.
