I don't know what you consider polite, but not reacting at all to what other people say, and instead blow a post artificially up by inserting vast amounts of off-topic information, is generally less polite as a short and precise answer, which respects the other poster.
Not here. Spanish is one of those languages where you can extend stuff. Instead of saying "leche" (milk) you could say "líquido perlático de la consorte del toro" and indeed it looks more elegant.
The concept of off-topicness was a concept that I first discovered when I entered Internet and found anglosaxon people.
Long texts being improvised with verses here are folklore and they are called "retahila". A good retahila also might have some humor in it and it becomes entertainment.
Short chat communication is indeed seen as low culture.
The ability to build long statements in spanish without losing coherence indicates high culture and a good use of language, at least here, despite of the effort that reader must do to understand it (reader must have high culture to understand a well constructed long sentence).
You may read a short tale of Julio Cortázar here
http://www.ciudadseva.com/textos/cuentos/esp/cortazar/autopist.htm
Julio Cortazar is a remarkable writer.
He is a high culture writer.
Short sentences are for amateurs, not for people with high culture.
Spanish is about elegance and handling complexity of a very rich language.
If you try to read Don Quijote, El Cid Campeador, or authors like Romulo Gallegos, you may push your understanding of spanish to the limit with high culture literature.
150 vs 350? Typical dimensions here are 100 - 200 pages without references and appendixes. 350 pages is already the minimum scale of a habilitation.
Blame them for letting us to have a project with a short scope. I had to survey the whole country, and I had only 4 months. There was no chance to do more in that period. Let alone the fact that I had luggage robbed during the trip...