Does the amount of words a topic have affect how many people reply to your topic, or how many people can find your topic via search engines?
I think shorter topics like "Forum games" like This or that, question games, etc get more replies in my experience.
But, longer unique topics tend to get more search engine traffic from people searching for phrases which are found in longer topics since the search engine has more text to index.
I agree, well thought out and nicely worded threads and posts are ideal. They get crawled more and obviously get more interest, but you have to take it as it comes. Sometimes your members are going to post short and non quality posts but you should always leave the choice up to them.
I think it'd be ideal to have a mix of both. Long, detailed topics for real discussion, and for certain new members who did that sort of thing. Also short topics or games to get some quick posts from the other, more common types of new members.
It depends on what activity you're looking for. Current members who need discussion need lots of things to post about, to bring new members you need lots of quality, unique content so longer posts. A mix of both is probably best.
