I can go through 8-10 hours (I haven't really counted) of threads in twenty minutes. It takes another 40 to reply to the ones I'm interested in, and then I'm off to the races.
I check Articles when I wake up, around dinner, and before going to bed. Not a perfect system, but it works for me.
By “skim,” I mean that I rarely read the entire thread during the first glance. I will leave a placemarker as a reply a good number of times, that serves as a reminder for me to come back and read the whole thing.