Minimum post lengths

[HomuraBL 851]

To be honest, I would prefer if they halved 100 for the minimum. 50 would be enough for the occasional short posts I make. I'm not sure how other people would like that, but I would.

 

You know, maybe it would be better with something like 60-70? It provides a good enough comfort without people posting "I like this" in a way that people could still spam that stuff.

[Random User 249]

You know, maybe it would be better with something like 60-70? It provides a good enough comfort without people posting "I like this" in a way that people could still spam that stuff.

 

I'm not sure how you can post something similar to "I like this" in fifty characters, but 60-70 still feels reasonable enough.

[Teh Boi 113]

You know, maybe it would be better with something like 60-70? It provides a good enough comfort without people posting "I like this" in a way that people could still spam that stuff.

 

I am ok with this. 100 is too much for minimum. Sometimes people will just ask for simple answers, like "where can I get X thing?" To which you reply with "You can try x website/picture.jpg here it is/the source for it is X thing"

Or a petition, in which case you reply with /signed.

But 100 is too much, and I stand by my... uh... opinion?

[HomuraBL 851]

While I'm still technically not on your guys' side because I still very much like the 100 character limit. If it will get you guys to stop complaining, then I'm for a 60-70 limit.

Edited July 23, 2012 by Bandana RaccoonBLee

[Teh Boi 113]

If it will get you guys to stop complaining.

 

Steam Powered Users Forum in a nutshell.

Anyway, I automatically regret writing this reply because now I had to write my regret in order to complete the 100 mark.

[Whiteshade 1,426]

Steam Powered Users Forum in a nutshell.

Anyway, I automatically regret writing this reply because now I had to write my regret in order to complete the 100 mark.

 

You are a pretty funny guy. Zoop is not amused though, so I will bet $5 on your eventual ban regardless.

 

Anyways, I'll let this thread move a bit more then I'll submit my own proposal. Real life beckons.

[Teh Boi 113]

You are a pretty funny guy. Zoop is not amused though, so I will bet $5 on your eventual ban regardless.

 

Anyways, I'll let this thread move a bit more then I'll submit my own proposal. Real life beckons.

 

Nah, it's all in good old fashioned fun! I do stand firmly on my opinion about the minimum being too high.

[Dark Qiviut 22,396]

Although I'm unsure if the coding works, what I propose is this:

 

instead of having a hard-set minimum, I recommend a soft minimum with a give-or-take scenario. Instead of one hundred characters per post in some places, how about fifty or sixty and give or take five characters below the minimum? With sections with a 200-post minimum, how about ninety to one hundred characters and give or take ten characters below the minimum? In the Status Updates, I've noticed some users have had a difficulty posting within the minimum because it's very hard-lined. Although I completely concur with what Zoop, Swoop, and Feld set up, and I stand by being 100 characters being not that hard to write, I also understand their problem. What if they don't have anything more to say, and they're just one or two characters away from the minimum? Do they break the rules by adding white characters within a spoiler, ditch the post altogether, or rewrite it to where the user's point can possibly get lost?

 

Regarding an earlier argument between Ice Storm and Whiteshade, quality and quantity have nothing to do with each other. While often, a short, minuscule post can look spammy, there ARE instances where being brief can lead to a good, succinct point. Increasing the post quantity just to meet the minimum can take that brief post with a good point and add a pile of junk that none of us desire to see. You CAN have a great brief post with several good points, while you can see a long post with more than two thousand characters be full of bull rubbish.

 

Now, for role-playing, I'm not experienced, but I watch it from various places such as LiveJournal. As a writer and storyteller myself, this variation follows the same boat.

 

For example, in role-playing (and fiction writing on its own), this:

"That's bull", Joe said.

…works so much better than this:

Joe clearly thought that that was a load of bull. Therefore, Joe decided after careful consideration with a cost benefit analysis, to openly voice his opinions. "That's bull", Joe said.

The first quoted piece is very brief with only a few characters, but it gets the message across much better. The dialogue remains the same in both examples, but the former is more organic and tells the story better. The latter example is incredibly redundant and contains unnecessary description. Even if you changed the description around to make it hit the 100-character mark or a little less or to make the description for fluid, the dialogue still loses its impact.

 

(Credit goes to Whiteshade for this, BTW.)

 

I completely understand why the staff went with this direction, and I'm for what they did, but the shorter, snappier posters (who desire to get a point across in fewer characters) have their good reasons, too. Therefore, this currently feels like a "quick fix" solution.

Edited July 23, 2012 by Dark Qiviut

[HomuraBL 851]

 

Stuff

 

 

 

There is a problem with your argument. Saying "That's bull," is still bad. It may be better, but its still bad.

 

The reason being is that he should explain why something is bull.

[Evilshy 5,090]

To the complainers complaining about the complainers: Some of us can summarize our detailed opinions, making them short but not lacking quality. We're not all lazy.

 

That being said, though I think I already said this, I don't really have a problem with this, unless I start getting in trouble for a few invisible characters tacked onto the end of a short, yet relevant response. The character counter should help a bit.

[Teh Boi 113]

To the complainers complaining about the complainers: Some of us can summarize our detailed opinions, making them short but not lacking quality. We're not all lazy.

 

That being said, though I think I already said this, I don't really have a problem with this, unless I start getting in trouble for a few invisible characters tacked onto the end of a short, yet relevant response. The character counter should help a bit.

 

I am not lazy either, but some times your answer is 5 words long! Like giving the source to a picture, or something of the likes.

[Archangel 143]

I'm not sure how you can post something similar to "I like this" in fifty characters, but 60-70 still feels reasonable enough.

 

Challenge accepted.

 

"I applaud how stupendous this thing I agree with is to mine eyes."

 

That's about fifty characters. Probably.

 

Either way my "I'm going to make this a short post" posts end up being at least two paragraphs long usually so this doesn't really bother me.

[False Perception 482]

A lot of times in an already rocky RP with people who are new at it, it might be hard to get it started. You might have to make filler posts, and there is only so much you can do alone without godmodding another person's character. You have to throw in meaningless posts here and there that don't progress the story so people can be reminded that they dedicated themselves to an RP.

 

I see we added in a counter. That's very helpful. Though, I can still get my point across sometimes with just a few words. I feel no shame adding in some invisible text if I'm just a few below. I for one believe this is still a circumstantial rule. I also see a LOT of hidden posts here...

 

Check yourself before you wreck yourself.

[pinkiefan1287 610]

Well this might be a good rule for the site. Now we have to be very detailed when we post something about a certain topic.

[False Perception 482]

Oh, and the thinking behind this rule is obviously one that is intended to minimize off-topic posts so as to keep reports to a minimum so the moderators won't need to work as hard.

[Twiliscael 3,960]

D:

I left for about a week and this happens? What is this tyranny? OMGOMGOMGOMG.

 

Seriously, while not a fan of this change, I support the administration's choice.

[NavelColt 22,880]

I'd just like to say that the counter is helpful overall for me, at least. The ability to reword things while you're still initially typing it, is far more helpful then making a post that may or may not be over 100 characters in the dark (because sometimes they're just in that frame of 'is this 100 or not?), and you need to post it to see if it whines at you or not

[Viscra Maelstrom 3,718]

i think it's a good idea, this character-limit system. makes for more readable and thought-out posts to be made (hopefully), and it should hopefully make people think twice before posting in some cases. (see i just exceeded 200 characters in this post that's not so hard now is it).

[I used to be a stranger 7,993]

Well I'm glad they haven't shortened the upper limit.

I've worried some days that 60,000 characters wasn't enough, in lieu of some of the more... loquacious discourses I've made.

 

God bless you Chesterton for providing me with a quote that I relate to.

"It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest provocation."

[Solar Wind 595]

hmmmm... This is indeed an interesting rule but all in all I think its fine. Even if there will always be ponies who white text this has definitely stopped most of it. I feel that if you have 94 characters or so then the rest shouldnt count because your less than ten off. But thats just me.

Edited July 24, 2012 by SolarWind

[Pinkazoid 3,493]

Most (not all) who are complaining about this rule are newer members less than a month here) you guys probably don't know that we've encountered, trolls spammers, and even anti-bronies, who joined posted an image or video against bronies and they left, of course the modsdealed with them, banishing them from the forums, but of course the only way for them to get rid of them would be if they angered someone, or rustled people's jimmies. And the only trace of them trace of them left were those bronies who

 

Most (not all) who are complaining about this rule are newer members less than a month here) you guys probably don't know that we've encountered, trolls spammers, and even anti-bronies, who joined posted an image or video against bronies and they left, of course the modsdealed with them, banishing them from the forums, but of course the only way for them to get rid of them would be if they angered someone, or rustled people's jimmies. And the only trace of them trace of them left were those bronies who knew what happened, now the easiest way to do this is to stop them entirely from posting, it doesn't contribute to the forums in any way, most posts they'd make wouldn't have much thought put in anyways, I know the rule wasn't made for this, it was made so people would think, and try to make their posts longer. Not all short posts are meaningless, but it wouldn't hurt to say something more, 100 characters ain't much to me, 50 characters would change anything at all, as for RP'ing posts, the mods were nice enough to allow the posts to affect our post count, might as well try to make your posts worthy of it by making the detailed, or at least longer, I like this rule, not because it makes people make unnecessary long posts, but because it encourages other's too make them longer.

[Whiteshade 1,426]

No one so far has answered my inquiry. Prove that short posts are bad posts. How many (non Cloudsdale) one word posts are deleted? What percentage of 1 word posts are deleted? What percentage of 5 word posts? Who is most likely to make a 1-5 word post that would be deleted? Who is most likely to make a 1-5 word post that is not deleted? Who is most likely to make a 1-5 word post that gets brohoofed? (That last one was just for my curiosity )

For example, if it was revealed that blank flanks and muffins were most likely to make a short post and have it deleted, then it would be appropriate to apply the limit until cupcake rank, or something like that. At the current point, I feel that this change was spurred by causation, and not correlation, and that the 100 was just an arbitrary value made up. I need stats on this.

[Killian Jones 2,655]

Here is what I had to send through PM to a confused member:

 

Posts should be long enough to convey your feelings properly and in a way that can be used to discussed the topic at hand. For example in a topic "Who is your favourite pony?" simply do not go in and scream "Rainbow Dash" and leave, as this is not proper discussion something like the following is more acceptable:

 

I like Rainbow Dash because of how athletic she is. Also her natural tendency to do things which she considers cool.

I hope people understand what we want and what we don't from this.

Edited July 24, 2012 by Tich

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,526]

Well I'm glad they haven't shortened the upper limit.

I've worried some days that 60,000 characters wasn't enough, in lieu of some of the more... loquacious discourses I've made.

 

God bless you Chesterton for providing me with a quote that I relate to.

"It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest provocation."

 

60,000? Where'd you get that number? The upper limit is a bit over one million characters. Being loquacious is something we're quite ready for around here.

[NavelColt 22,880]

60,000? Where'd you get that number? The upper limit is a bit over one million characters. Being loquacious is something we're quite ready for around here.

 

Apparently Blue hasn't seen some of your more...'Feldian Length Detected: Make your bodies ready' posts that you've done in the past </3