Minimum post lengths

[Nouth 496]

I am still a bit unsure what to think about this, but probably it is a good step. It doesn't bother me much anymore now when there's a counter.

[Starshine 16,333]

Thessalonian manatee

 

No more invi-text! Praise the Emperor!

 

*ahem

 

 

 

http://translate.google.com/#en|es|I%20want%20to%20kiss%20someone%20until%20they%20die%20of%20dysentery

 

 

 

But the long-ass link still counts to the characters thingy tough

[Key Gear 6,663]

No one so far has answered my inquiry. Prove that short posts are bad posts.

 

Before we set out to look at whether or not short posts are bad posts, it is necessary to qualify what is meant when you say “bad”. A post can be bad for several reasons. On this site, I would say that short posts were bad for a few key reasons:

• They fall significantly below the average post size on this site.
• They were becoming remarkably more common, thus dragging down the average size of a post on the site.

Now that I've enumerated the specific reasons why small posts are bad, I will provide you with statistical evidence that I hope you will find persuasive. Please note, there are other reasons that small posts can be construed as “bad”. However, those reasons are subjective and cannot be explained or evaluated efficiently with the statistical data that we currently have.

 

 

Take a look at the image that I've included above. In this chart, sample size is the number of posts sampled from that month. Average L is the average size of each post in terms of how many letters it has. Standard D is the standard deviation for that month. Then, the remaining rows are the percentage of posts from the sample with less than a certain number of words.

 

Feel free to reference the picture as you read through the rest of my post. That picture tells a story, and it is this story that holds the secret to answering your question. Before I tell that story though, I would like to give you a few caveats regarding this information:

• These statistics are summary statistics and are based on a sample that was collected from the site at random. However, the sample size was sufficiently large to avoid unnecessary bias in the data.
• The Colosseum and the RP areas were excluded from this sample because RP have a tendency to be longer than average and CDC posts have a tendency to be shorter than average.
• Standard deviation can be considered a measure of how “spread out” the data is. The larger the standard deviation, the more extremes. In other words, as the standard deviation increases the number of posts that are close to the minimum and close to the maximum also increase. A comparatively large standard deviation is a sign of a lack of consistency in quality.

Now, look at the 1st line of that chart. What you see is that the average post size was around 200 characters, the standard deviation was fairly reasonable, and only about 6% of the posts consisted of one or 2 words.

 

Now, look at what happens over time. While the average post size remains relatively consistent, both the standard deviation and the number of posts with only one or 2 words increases. In fact, the standard deviation rises quite dramatically.

 

What does all of this mean? Well let's step through the information and get to the bottom of things:

• The number of tiny posts has been growing. We can see that by looking at the last column in the picture.

• The standard deviation has been increasing dramatically. Earlier on in this post, I explained what standard deviation is. So, what this means is that we are seeing more “extremes” in the post sizes.

• The average post size has remained about the same. How could this be possible? Isn't the number of small posts increasing? Well, it turns out that the average has stayed the same because more walls of text are also being written.

• So, we have more walls of text, more small posts, and the average has stayed the same... So, doesn't this mean that we have the same number of posts in the middle? No, because if we had more posts of average size then the standard deviation would not be so large. Instead, we have a huge standard deviation.

Now we come to the conclusion. We have more really large posts and more really tiny posts. What we have here is a site that is threatening to divide itself into 2, completely separate levels of quality - those that write really big posts and those that write posts with nearly nothing in them. This is a problem.

 

I know what you're thinking, “why is this a problem? I don't see any issue!”. Well, let me explain. When you have 2, dramatically different, levels of quality on your site, then what you have is a situation that is pleasing to no one. Members that prefer long and drawnout discussions will be annoyed by lots of small posts, and members that prefer lots of small posts will be annoyed by walls of text.

 

There is the problem of inconsistent discussion quality. A member may type a large original post to start a thread. Then, that member may become disappointed when lots of tiny responses are posted. In threads that involve a debate, members will sometimes take a shortcut and post just a handful of words rather than addressing the issue; this leads to misunderstandings and hurt feelings.

 

There is the search engine angle. The great majority of the members that found this site located it through a search engine. All of the prominent search engines penalize sites that have inconsistent quality levels within their pages. From this perspective, the increasing amount of tiny posts was becoming a threat to the continued growth of the site.

 

Finally, there is the issue of administration. Last month alone, nearly 100,000 posts were made on this site in total. If you look at the chart posted above, and you can see that, at the current rate of increase, it would not of been too long before 10% of all posts were of 2 or less words. If 10% of those posts are 2 words or less, then that equates to approximately 10,000 tiny posts.

 

Right now there are only 19 moderators and administrators on the site. For each moderator, that it is about 5260 micro posts spread all throughout the forum. For all of those that have said we should just moderate the small posts, this should be a wake-up call. It is completely and totally impossible to moderate the quality of that many posts without requiring a small army of moderators.

 

Faced with this situation, I'm sure you can understand why Feld0 believed that a minimum character limit would be the best possible compromise in a rather difficult situation. I hope that I've been able to successfully illustrate you why we considered this increasing tide of small posts to be something that warranted both concern and action. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

Edited July 24, 2012 by Scootacool

[Tom 891]

Brohoof cannot replace the words "I agree", "Thank you", "Quoted and brohoofed for truth" or similar.

Nor can it replace the short comments of "I like that", or small puns that without doubt is neccesary in forums with a familiar tone like this one.

 

That's mostly down to opinion.

Although I feel that Finest has made a convincing post about that issue.

 

okay but what do we do as far as the posting pictures. in the funny pictures thread? and stuff like that.

 

Two solutions that I can conjure:

One, we include descriptions about the images we post.

Secondly, move the topics to Cloudsdale, where there would no longer be subject to the character limit.

[PonyEcho 1,610]

well this charactor limit has been up for 3 day now and i'm having no problems with (apart from the very start when i couldnt even post somthing that was over 200 charactors long so i spam to the point that it would post, but that was all fixed and sortted when i got my warning point)

Edited July 28, 2012 by Feld0
Calling your fellow members "drooling retards" and "scumbags" is not okay.

[Espeon 338]

This seriously happened four days ago and I just found out about it now? I have zero problem with this and I find the charts in the OP to be hilarious. I always tried to make my posts last a line or two anyway and mother of god I'm already rapidly approaching 300 characters what is going on right now

 

I've seen forums with a 10charlimit, and some people there would say shit like "Yes 10charlimit" just to bend the rules. The need for a character limit is always going to be based on the constituent members of the forum. The aforementioned forum (Serebii's, for those who are curious) has a ton of little kids who probably shouldn't be on the internet. Another forum I actually frequent, Smogon's, has no lower limit and things go fine over there, from what I can tell. It also has a lot more teenagers and older, so that probably helps quite a bit. Now, understand that I do not intend to offend here, but this forum leans towards Serebii's much more than Smogon's. This should be of little surprise, given the premise. In order to keep quality of discussion out of the toilet, reasonable character limits are a good thing, and while 100 may seem daunting at first, my post right now isn't even that long and it's well over a thousand. Remember that spaces and punctuation count. That's not to say all members here are young and/or immature, not in the slightest. Some make consistent high-quality posts and this is going in a pre-emptive defense direction that I don't want it to go.

 

I just read PonyEcho's post and lolol let me hide in a fort made out of my desk because he was pretty much right on the money about me, accounting for exaggeration. No, you're not, and I quote but not in the forum sense, "drooling retards who shouldnt be on the forum." If I implied that, then I apologize and so on and so forth, but do understand that it can be exasperating to read certain posts here and there. That doesn't mean we don't love you.

 

Like most times, I got here kinda late and such and I don't feel like reading through eleven pages of thread and this stuff was probably covered by people like Scootacool, Zoop, LARP, not Veece because I don't think he's on here much if at all anymore but if he were he would be in this list, and anyone else I may have forgot, which is probably about half the people who posted in this thread. The tag is very much true to my situation right now, Zoop, you precognitive bastard (and to those who might get offended, I mean this in the best way). Final char. count: 2529

[Whiteshade 1,426]

And text

 

That brings me to my second part. Why 100? Given that the average word is 5.1 characters, that's about 19-20 words. The percent of posts less than 13 words is 38%, so for 19-20 a conservative estimate would put the figure at around 40-45%. That's almost half of all forum posts! Also percentage of posts above the mean are very small, but they tend to exceed the mean by quite a bit. If inconsistency were the issue, wouldn't it be more practical to place a maximum cap then? Firstly, it would do the same thing, that is reduce the standard deviation, as well would make a user more likely to post multiple times on a thread, in a point by point exchange rather than dropping a manifesto and walking out. This would contribute to longer threads and also higher post totals. As well, a small portion of people make large posts, so making this change instead would not affect 40-45% of posts, probably at least 4 times less than that, at around 10% or lower. As well, modern society in general is shifting towards brevity and convenience, which is why sites such as Twitter enjoy generous growth and large traffic. I will play the cynic here, but a minimum will not be a decent long term strategy, as I only see the human attention span decreasing in the future, not increasing. Your chart seems to support this particular point, as percentages for short posts consistently increase, hence is it plausible to assume that users actually prefer shorter posts over longer ones.

Also the 100 char limit itself. It puts the posts affected at 40-45%. Taking out at least 40% of your posts in one fell swoop seems to be an overreaction. At the very least I don't see post totals going up as a result of this change, and the forums will definitely have more lurkers, but not necessarily more activity.

I have 2 proposals:

1. Cut down from 40% to at least a quartile. That's around 50 characters, more or less a bit.

2. Remove the minimum and put a maximum of 3000 characters. It is still plenty of space to type, this post itself is only 2089 characters, so you can roughly post this and 50% more.

[Nouth 496]

I have 2 proposals:

1. Cut down from 40% to at least a quartile. That's around 50 characters, more or less a bit.

2. Remove the minimum and put a maximum of 3000 characters. It is still plenty of space to type, this post itself is only 2089 characters, so you can roughly post this and 50% more.

 

I would like to say that I disagree with the second proposal, I do believe that there are occasions when you could write even more than that, and limiting max. post size doesn't seem right to me because it may happen to be limiting. I think that minimum limit is less bad than maximum limit....

[PonyEcho 1,610]

I just read PonyEcho's post and lolol let me hide in a fort made out of my desk because he was pretty much right on the money about me, accounting for exaggeration. No, you're not, and I quote but not in the forum sense, "drooling retards who shouldnt be on the forum." If I implied that, then I apologize and so on and so forth, but do understand that it can be exasperating to read certain posts here and there. That doesn't mean we don't love you.

 

yeah my post may have gotten a bit too far than it actualy is but i've seen argument about this, one person made a valid point about how this would negitivly effect the welcoming plaza and another person said things like

 

"If you're going to whine about such a simple rule then please leave" and "Is it really that hard for you to write a hundred letter sentence?If not then you are not worthy for such forum." there is more thing liek this and im sorry for using this one persons quotes,

but what give this person the right to say stuff like that and to act so high and fucking mighty?

is it because this person was on this forum longer then the other guy, or is it the fact that they contribute to the site? bleh im going out of control sorry i just hate people who act like that because no one had the right to act like there supeirior to someone else when in truth there both human being and should be treated equily.

Edited July 24, 2012 by PonyEcho

[Key Gear 6,663]

That brings me to my second part. Why 100? Given that the average word is 5.1 characters, that's about 19-20 words.

 

The average word may be about 5 characters, but the average sentence in the English language is about 15 words. Requiring people to convey their thoughts with one or 2 full sentences is hardly the definition of tyranny.

 

If inconsistency were the issue, wouldn't it be more practical to place a maximum cap then? Firstly, it would do the same thing, that is reduce the standard deviation, as well would make a user more likely to post multiple times on a thread, in a point by point exchange rather than dropping a manifesto and walking out.

 

Your argument is that posts that are less than the average size of an English sentence should be favored over posts that are lengthy and discursive? There seems to be a fundamental disconnect between our thought processes. Your argument implies that you seem to believe that a smaller post - of less than 20 words - can be equivalent in quality to one that is substantially longer. I disagree with you.

 

The idea that the average quality of a post with less than 20 words is equivalent to that of a post with more than 750 is intrinsically flawed. You see, quality in written language is measured by the amount of information that is communicated, how efficiently the information is conveyed, and how understandable the information is. The purpose of language is to convey thoughts, emotions, and feelings. It is likely that more words are required to do this than less.

 

Whiteshade, in this thread you have written a total of about 6500 characters and 1100 words. The quality level of your posts has honestly been quite impressive to me. While I disagree with your perspective, I appreciate both the time and the care that you have taken in compiling your objections. Now, I would pose a challenge to you. Do you believe that you could've conveyed the same information while using less than 20 words per post?

 

The administrators of this forum were faced with a decision between leaning towards longer posts or shorter posts. They sided with longer posts because they believe that it would be better to increase the overall quality of the experience than to decrease it. I agree with that decision.

 

The simple fact of the matter is that smaller posts will always contain less information than an equivalent post of greater length. Since the purpose of this site is to discuss, it makes sense to increase the amount of information available to discuss by increasing the average post size.

 

As well, modern society in general is shifting towards brevity and convenience, which is why sites such as Twitter enjoy generous growth and large traffic. I will play the cynic here, but a minimum will not be a decent long term strategy, as I only see the human attention span decreasing in the future, not increasing.

 

We have something exactly like Twitter on this site already - status updates. The purpose of status updates is to give people the ability to communicate succinctly. The purpose of a thread on a forum is to discuss, debate, learn, and share. All of these functions are better served with a larger post length. Let me show you a few of the other communities that I post in occasionally:

 

http://news.ycombinator.com/

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/

http://arstechnica.com/

http://economist.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

 

Based on the success of Twitter, you seem to believe that society, in general, is moving towards micro-formats of communication. There is evidence to suggest that this is not the case. If you browse through those sites and look at the comments, you'll see that the average length of each comment is significantly above 100 characters.

 

I think that the reason you believe that society is moving towards brevity and convenience is simply due to observation bias. I would hazard to guess that the average age on the sites that you frequent is in the teens. Typically, most teenagers and young adults are early in the process of mastering the art of communication. Because of this, brevity and convenience are favored.

 

If you take a look at the sites that I visit, you'll see that, while succinctness is still valued, so too is being able to argue a point, elegantly convey a personal experience, and discuss technical matters. All of these require more words and not less. So you see, it is not society in general that is moving towards brevity and convenience. Rather, it is only certain areas that are moving towards brevity and convenience.

 

I would forward another argument though. I would argue that, in fact, society is not moving towards brevity and convenience at all. Instead, a new form of communication has arisen that did not previously exist. Facebook, Twitter, and other sites like these did not exist just 5 or so years ago. This means that there was no real avenue for small, time sensitive communications that are of low consequence.

 

Now that we have these established social networks, what society is trying to do is to establish the extent to which this form of communication should proliferate. Part of this process will naturally consist of these “micro-posts” spreading to other communication mediums. As this communication experiment progresses, society will naturally self-optimize and the boundaries and limitations of where micro-posting is best used will be established.

 

This search for the appropriate usage of the new communication medium is not a new thing. If you go back and you look at the telephone, for example, you will see that there was a period of time in which society was honestly not quite sure what to do with this new innovation.

 

Similarly, if you go back and look at USENET and other Internet discussion areas that predate the World Wide Web, you will see the same process taking place. The question is always the same. To what extent should the norms of older communication methods apply to this newer method? What should be the rules and boundaries?

 

Hear me out, I'm not trying to say that communication is not evolving. What I am trying to say is that you cannot take the 1st half a decade in which a new communication method comes into existence and extrapolate this indefinitely. When you say that society is moving towards brevity and convenience, you convey an absoluteness that I do not believe is justified in light of existing information on the subject.

 

By the way...

 

"That's bull", Joe said.

 

Joe stood in the middle of the street. The wind and the rain buffeted his lonely figure, the events of the last few days weighed heavy on his mind. “What happened to me,” he said. The statement was not so much a question as an admission. He knew what happened. He had been there. His friends had betrayed him. He had lost everything.

 

The sudden sound of his cell phone jarred him from his reverie. He answered it. It was a prank call. A high-pitched voice spoke, “Is your refrigerator running?” Joe hung up. "That's bull", Joe said.

Edited July 24, 2012 by Scootacool

[~Muffin of Chaos~ 184]

I think this new character limit will be very easy to fulfill. I mean look, I haven't even tried, and I'm at 123 characters!

[Emerald Flame 381]

I'm glad to see this rule go into effect. I started coming here less often when I noticed the posts started getting more spammy. I joined this forum for actual conversation, not glorified text messages.

[Shiki 5,855]

This thread is still getting this much attention? I didn't realise how incredibly difficult it was for the average user to type something related to the said topic that reached over 100 characters in length.

[PonyEcho 1,610]

This thread is still getting this much attention? I didn't realise how incredibly difficult it was for the average user to type something related to the said topic that reached over 100 characters in length.

 

well im sure not everypony has had a say on the subject yet, some may not even know about it yet because they havent been online. Edited July 24, 2012 by PonyEcho

[Shiki 5,855]

well im sure not everypony has had a say on the subject yet, some may not even know about it yet because they havent been online.

 

True. I forgot not everybody on this site is a no life teenager who does nothing but sits on the computer, and signs into every forum on the internet every day.

[Azura 1,107]

This thread is still getting this much attention? I didn't realise how incredibly difficult it was for the average user to type something related to the said topic that reached over 100 characters in length.

 

Not everypony is like me who spends over eight hours on the forums everyday you know, though it would be nice if there were more active users around here instead of the same ponies over and over again.

[Glaceon 793]

Okay this rule so far has been a wonder in roleplaying.

So far the quality of roleplay posts I've seen has improved by at least 60%. Keep up the good work admins.

[Wisebox 49]

I think this will be a bit annoying on some topics but i do welcome it.It would be nice if there was an option to take this off when making a new topic but that could lead to more yes and no posts and less thought out sentences. Look at that 312 characters and it did not take to long to make so i wont complain. papaya

Edited July 25, 2012 by Wisebox

[Crystal Sparkle 344]

I have to admit, this is going to be a wee bit hard for me. Given the time I actually have for the internet nowadays, five worlds are simply the best I can do. But I've made made many adjustments in my life, I guess I can go along with this.

[HunterTSN 1,444]

At first I wasn't sure about the minimum post lengths but I've begun to notice the quality of posts on popular threads and RPs is gone up, round of applause for the mods.

Edited July 25, 2012 by Feld0
Don't share ways to circumvent the limit.

[Evilshy 5,090]

Okay this rule so far has been a wonder in roleplaying.

So far the quality of roleplay posts I've seen has improved by at least 60%. Keep up the good work admins.

 

Now if only there were a way to enforce proper, or at least decent, grammar. That's probably my main turnoff from RP's :/

[caesar15 231]

100 chars? A little too little for me IMO. Oh wait, i couldn't type that because of lack of chars.

[Glaceon 793]

 

 

Now if only there were a way to enforce proper, or at least decent, grammar. That's probably my main turnoff from RP's :/

 

Agreed. I wish there was a way to improve the grammar of people in roleplays.

[False Perception 482]

Agreed. I wish there was a way to improve the grammar of people in roleplays.

 

Oh, and it would help if people figured that a simple brohoof can express your feelings to a post. If you are only agreeing, a brohoof can do that. If you need to retort any point of their post, that's when you respond. Responding just to agree isn't necessary and clogs up the thread. Yes. We ALL want better grammar in roleplays. I also want new users not to make a show saying, "oh, why did no one notice me when I was gone," but THAT isn't going to happen, and this is the Internet, so THAT won't happen.

 

In conclusion, a simple brohoof could have expressed your feelings about that post (and I see you did brohoof it) without you needing to respond.

[Neikos 968]

So after using this new 'feature' for a few days here is my opinion:

 

 

It is out of place in quite a lot of parts in the forums. Let's take the Everfree Forest:

 

My point speaks for itself, how can you call a "chat" a chat if you are telling people to make huge sentences. ( And yes 100 characters make big sentences. ) And discussions are fast paced and not a place where you are going to write the next novel. ( Could be awesome though. )

 

Using SEO excuses doesn't really help. How many people join on MLPForums because they found an awesome reply to the "What is the above member known for?" thread, or any thread that is posted here. Let's take this one: http://mlpforums.com...baptist-church/ if I saw that, I would read the first few replies and go "Oh wow people sure are hateful here and like to bash others." and quit the site. So much for joining. There are loads of other gems like this. Point is, people join because they come to a place where like-minded individuals dwell as well. It is the quality of the posts that defines if they stay or not. ( See how I said quality and not quantity. )

 

For a few places it works well ( to an extent again ) like the Roleplay World ( I'm guessing here and from the other members who said that. ) because here you can link Quality to Quantity due to the fact that you need X amount of words to express X amount of detail. ( detail = quality btw. ) Another place it works well is also the Art section due to the fact that if you like something you can just brohoof it and if you have a critique or anything thoughtful to say it will be usually longer than 100 characters hence why the 'ban' shouldn't change much.

 

So those are my thoughts, have fun. But I will keep quote people to answer simple questions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

TL;DR:

 

These sections are okay to be restricted:

 

But let these alone:

 

 

( Looks really disproportional doesn't it? )

 

To show you one of the instances where it really annoyed me was here:

 

http://mlpforums.com/topic/25517-mlpforum-dayz-group/page__st__20#entry583895

 

53 characters. What else to add? Should I say how my evening was and explain why I believe that strawberries are better than apples?

Edited July 26, 2012 by Jubilee van Neikos