Play by Post RPGs, and what failed for me.

Playing by Post in a forum is a way of roleplaying without the need to meet with other players in real time, be that face to face or online. Fundamentally its about working together to tell a story in text, with players taking turns...

... and its terribly slow. I've been one of those shits that just fades on a play by post game and stops posting. I'm not happy about that. So I've put some thought into why I became a shit, and have come to the conclusion that playing by post using standard RPG rules is the problem (which means I can blame the mechanism and deny being a shit, huzzar!). The normal RPG process that you would use around the table when applied to the post system fails me. It goes this way...

• The ref posts a situation. 
• Player A responds with a character action, unsure of some narrative fact asks a question
• Player B  responds with character action.
• Ref answers player A's question. And posts story progress.
• Player B responds with an attack action, maybe makes a roll.
• Ref responds to the result of the roll.
• Player A responds with an attack, makes a roll.
• Ref responds to the result of the roll, tells player A to make a follow up roll.
• Player A posts the new die roll result.
• etc

And with each post coming 1-3 days after the previous one, the game drags on. 

Players forget what they were doing and have to read back across a long series of posts trying to find what the story actually is and what's happening. Scrolling back over two or three pages just to read a bit of description from the opening of the scene is tiresome and the answer may not even be there in the text, meaning rather than progressing with his post they end doing nothing more than posting another question... and waiting.

With this drawn out process there's no excitement, and little to no thrill in actual play (writing).

There is a good alternative, but I don't know what it is. However I am going to put some time into coming up with an answer. The play style/mechanism needs to be altered to keep me engaged, and I'm going to see what I can come up with.