Yes, some of the moments are hilariously entertaining (like Nynaeve thinking how men are violent and she should beat them up to make them see sense) but those moments are surrounded by endless descriptions of dresses, sniffing, chins being raised, dress-smoothing, braid-tugging, and glaring contests (how many scenes do we really need of women glaring at one another and the supposed "strongest" one, usually Egwene, winning the contest?)? These things contribute to character development the first few times we see them - after that, in the absence of real depth of thought from the characters doing this crap, it's just pointlessly annoying, like a joke that was told a thousand times too many. And that's why I disagree that cutting back on the sheer length of scenes and some (not all) of the details surrounding them, would somehow cause us to miss out on characterization; because, really, how much characterization is there for most characters that isn't just a repeat of what we've seen before from them?

When you disregard character quirks (Elayne's chin raising, Nynaeve's braid tugging, Egwene's glaring people into submission while "keeping her face smooth", etc.), most of the characters are generally flat and can be summed up almost entirely in a sentence or two. Hell, almost every woman in WoT is cut from the same mold. Yes, some are smarter than others. Yes, some are "stronger" than others (be it in the One Power or in sheer "I can outglare you and make you drop your eyes, so I win and you have to submit to me now!". Some hate channelers and some think channelers crap gold bouillon. But they're all manipulative. They're all (save one or two, who stand out like flashlights in the dark simply because they're surrounded by a sea of the "the same" of the opinion that men are mentally retarded and have to be bossed around by a woman. And the characterization of the men is the same way - the qualities that make one different from another are typically superficial (Perrin is huge, Mat is a rogue, Rand is doomed, Gawyn is a tool, Galad is Dudley Do Right, etc.).

But, when it comes down to the characters being multi-layered, differentiated by their motivations, points of view, attitudes toward others, and possessing of the qualities that make "real" people the individuals that they are, the series is severely lacking. The joy of books is that you can see into characters’ minds (TV has managed this a few times, like with the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where Buffy picked up the ability to read minds…and found out that Cordelia always says what she thinks), but, with many of the characters, seeing into their minds turns out to be a boring proposition because they aren’t very thoughtful past “I must break this person to my will!” or “Men are stupid” or “Women are mean”. I think that's how RJ wanted it, though. By giving us very little introspection from most characters, he left it open for reader interpretation (and left it open for those who take a character a face value to argue with those who take what little tidbits we're given from them and decide the character's actions aren't the sum of him/her). What's more, it gave him a mountain of vomited words in which to hide little gems...

And this is where I agree that abridging the series would change what RJ meant to create and that we’d miss out on some very important tidbits, just not characterization, which is lacking anyway. I don't think that RJ's purpose in repeating certain things ad nauseum (dress descriptions, glaring contests, braid tugging, chin raising, and women participating in man bashing) was just to beat us over the head with whatever particular thing he was repeating at the moment. I think, instead, that he used it so that the typical reader would be skimming those parts and end up missing something that came back like a brick smacking them in the face at some later time (Verin being Black Ajah, perhaps? Asmo's killer? the Ajah Head conspiracy? the fact that the only groups that aren't defined by their sexist views are the Forsaken and the Sea Folk?). I also think he did it to make it more difficult (or fun, depending on your POV) for the obsessively curious reader to find hints as to what might come and argue over who these characters really are and what they’re about.

I've always been the first to complain when characters in a work of fiction are cartoonish, and the characters in WoT fit this bill, but they are what they are for a reason. By making them caricatures of evil, goodness, mediocrity, strength, weakness, etc., RJ created an open world where the reader has to deduce for himself or herself whether the characters should be taken at face value (taking into consideration nothing but their actions) or whether we can build upon what little we're given in way of introspection from them to somehow justify their actions and how other characters respond to them. And, while we're working at that, we just might pick up on some tiny gem buried in the mountain of seemingly boring crap we had to wade through to argue our point.