In the article by Cliff J., he says to always stuff a bag, tent, tarp, when packing up…Why would stuffing be better than a nice folding up. Maybe I took it wrong?
Give It Up Coronaboy
In the end you know he’s always right. 
That struck me funny too. 1) My sleeping bags are always stuffed. 2)My tent won’t fit in its stuff sack without the best ol’ Boy Scout, neat, tight roll I can get it in.
If I recall he was talking about making a speedy departure from camp in the morning. If space isn’t an issue, and you’re pitching the tent again in a few hours, maybe it is worth thinking about his way.
In the end I’m probably going to find a bigger stuff sack for my tent.
the theory
as explained to me by a salesperson at one of the outdoors stores is that if you fold stuff, the item tends to wear out faster along the folds. It sounded good when I first heard it, then I realized that I had one of my tents re-floored twice, the cause being normal wear and tear, but never had a problem with excess wear along a crease. Maybe I’m just too dumb to wear things out properly.
Hadn’t heard that…
about things wearing out on the creases.
A buddy who used to work at a backbacking store said that stuffing was better for sleeping bags, but I thought it was mainly due to less compression/loss of loft over time. I know they are supposed to do better stored that way, and we usually store ours in very large stuff sacks.
I can see stuffing a rainfly for speed reasons if volume wasn’t an issue. It seems like dry bags are always near their capacity for me, and a bulky stuffed tarp or tent might just result in a last minute do over. Entropy stalks me like a wolf as it is, what might happen if tarps and tents started getting stuffed?
I stuff
I stuff most of my camping goods in drybags. Tent and fly, dining tarps, sleeping bags all go ass over tea kettle into the drybags and i just punch 'em in and shove out the air. no way to get it any smaller as the end result is a very densly packed package. I can’t even imagine the time you’d waste folding a 15X20 dining tarp.
steve
Stuff
I also find that folding traps air in the folds and makes it tougher to really compress the dry bags.
Bob