The Minimum Character Limit is dead*

[MelancholicMemory 2,025]

People who troll in the life advice forum will find themselves being shown the door shortly, so you won't have to worry about that.

I don't care about whether such people are banned. I care about the effect on the person being trolled when they're trying to ask for help. Even if there is no troll, the character limit would ensure good, detailed, well-thought out posts where it really matters.

[Meirno 550]

I'm kind of ambivalent about this, myself. Yay that I don't have to go out of my way to pad out statements that only take a brief sentence, but it still was a good tool for discouraging folks who only signed up to spam the shit outta the place. I'd have opted for a min that diminishes as you ascend rank (i.e., as you prove yourself capable of making meaningful posts), but I'm not a coder, so I don't know how difficult such a system may or may not be to implement, so...

 

 

I agree with Lowline. Yes, it makes it easier to make replies, but will this also kill conversations? The 100 character limit somewhat encouraged people to pull their posts on, possibly opening more paths of discussion. But this is just a minority of the forums that feels this way I'm sure. So in the mean time, way to go admins =) You can never go wrong if you find a nice medium where members and moderators are happy. 

[I am Lunar Fire 198]

I think that's an overstatement, The character minimum limit is not dead, it has simply been adjusted in places where 100 characters was sometimes a bit excessive. I don't frequently go to the RP section so I can't say much about it but I am glad you left the minimum for the Debate Pit at 100.

[Shanks 10,816]

I got the friend that introduced me to ponies to join, this place but he has rarely posted and mostly lurked because he hated the character minimum. Next I talk to him, I will tell him about this and this might persuade him to post a bit more so you guys might get to know @Inazuma a bit better.

Edited November 14, 2013 by EarthbendingProdigy

[ReverseFaller 2,483]

 

Oh, you know I'm just kidding...this is awesome!

[ovr9000percentcooler 107]

I've been here long enough to be agonized by this character limit.

 

So long and good riddance. 

[Moved to Elsewhere 11,331]

wow they took away the character limit

[Batbrony 16,055]

 Sounds good to me.  I've never had much of a problem with the character limits myself, but hopefully this does help stimulate discussion in threads.  Hopefully in the long run the quality of posts will not decline as a result of this change, but I'm not very worried about that.  Good call admins; it was a long time coming, but I think you guys made the right decision.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Batbrony

[Yellow Diamond 7,569]

Shoot! And here I thought I could continue to impose my reign of polysyllabic words! I suppose it had to come to an end...

 

(using filler to bypass 100 character minimum)

[Champion RD92 8,658]

Okay, and why did it take so long for this to happen??? I remember it was mentioned almost a year ago that the character minimum was gonna be changed or gotten rid of.

 

This should have been done a long time ago, if you ask me.

[Hive King 2,001]

 

There needs to be strange ripples near the weak calibrated crystal.

 

Extending special hyperspaces reverses the temporal gravity dampeners.

 

There must have been weak fluctuations within the another stumped matter stream.

 

There seems to be a quantum sensor array inside the core which catches strange damage around the special singularity.

 

There appears to be a critical crystal next to the hyperdrive which damages weak damage around the auxiliary gravity dampener. Running the another core damages ripples within the weak galaxy. Extending the quantum time-matter field affects ripples within the enhanced galaxy! I need to invert the charges. Running the auxiliary vortex affects fluctuations at the strange zone.

 

I must reverse the time-matter field. Expanding plasma, expanding matter stream. The another matter streams re-route the temporal hyperdrives inside the hyperspaces. The weak energys boost the enhanced energys within the zones. The reversed vortex vortex affects ripples inside the temporal vacuum time-matter field singularity.

 

There is a quantum time-matter field inside the plasma conduit which affects quantum anomalies at the weak burst! They need to re-route the energy, because the charge appears to be next to the fluctuations.

 

Calibrate the gravity dampeners!

 

Temporal plasma conduit must be contained, because the auxiliary diagnostic is stumped.

 

Expanding sensor array, vaporizing core.

 

 

TL:DR Technobabble filler is no longer needed, hurray!

[Red Diamond 549]

I bucking love you for this Lavo.

[Antismurf9001 1,271]

Question: was this intended to impose a character limit in the Cloudsdale Colosseum?  Not that there's anything wrong with that; it just seems odd...

[Dsanders 5,747]

Wow, well this was definitely unprecedented. Well let's hope no one takes advantage of it and spams everywhere. And I just realized that I'm really not used to being this less limited..

 

I am not really a man of brevity so I guess regardless of this lack of limit, I am still so used to writing out in 100s of characters. xD 

 

Oh my gosh, I can't seem to break out of this habit. I just can't help but ramble like I've always been doing on here. xD

 

 

Darn it forums. lol

[Rolls Royce 606]

Now I can more easily reply to posts now, no more thinking of ways to drag out my responses to topics, but I think I'll find myself still typing out lengthy posts for a while since I'm just too used to the 100 character limit.  This post is a prime example of that. 

[NavelColt 22,881]

So now we get to nail people for low-quality/pointless posts more often, instead <:'3 With more freedom comes more responsibility.

 

Whops, guess now isn't the time to try and bum people out Don't mind Joykillcord over here.

 

Wooooo and all that. One by one the blanket rules that everyone and their grandma has made unanimous complaints about are being altered. Wonder what all those devils-advocate players will whine about now that one of the biggest issues has been laxed. Probably that it's too low

[Starshine 16,334]

Oh, wow... I never thought I would live to see this thing comes true

I guess there won't be anymore CMV reports lol

 

Well then, I hope this will make discussions and silly banters more easier and less awkward.

 

 

 

(using filler to bypass 100 character minimum)

 

You sly devil :v

[Creamy Arty 6,252]

I joined shortly before the minimums were established and didn't notice them until a month or so afterwards when someone else complained about them. They never caused me any inconvenience. :\

 

Wow, well this was definitely unprecedented. Well let's hope no one takes advantage of it and spams everywhere. And I just realized that I'm really not used to being this less limited..

With or without the character minimums you still have to make posts relevant to the topic. Off-topic and spam posts are still what they are regardless of the character count. The character minimum rule was partially redundant because it kind of overlapped with our pointless/off-topic rule. Those who violated the character minimum to submit a relevant post (because it can still be done without hitting 100+ characters) and those who violated it to post something irrelevant both had their posts removed in the past. Not now. That's the basic idea behind this decision.

Should this prove in the end to make everything worse, littering the forum and generating a ton of work for us to do, character minimums could be established once again.
 

Question: was this intended to impose a character limit in the Cloudsdale Colosseum?  Not that there's anything wrong with that; it just seems odd...

Nope.

[NavelColt 22,881]

Okay, and why did it take so long for this to happen??? I remember it was mentioned almost a year ago that the character minimum was gonna be changed or gotten rid of.

 

This should have been done a long time ago, if you ask me.

 

Because during all that time, a complex system that would give people so many 'free passes' to post as much as they want in a post, in return for making so many posts above the character minimum, along with other bells and whistles, was under development. First by Key, then he left, and Lavo got around to it only after months of having ten thousand technical things (you think I'm kidding or exaggerating, but I wish it were the case) to deal with that were frankly more pressing.

 

Unfortunately, as with what happens so many times, a complex system is great on paper, but is inadequate in time, effort and even implementation when it comes to reality. Lower character minimum, more individual case-basis for mods removing low quality posts has been done in place of that complex system idea.

 

It should also be kept in mind that we are, even to this moment, still able to switch to something else in the future. Community management, like everything, has a science to it. There are trial runs, there are tests and there are hypotheses. A main thing to take away from this announcement is that the staff are trying to make some kind of advancement noticeable to the public. For so long have we sat saying change will come with this thing, because, for the longest time, we thought this complex idea would work out (ItSeemedLikeAGoodIdeaAtTheTime.GIF). A point I know I made to everyone else was that, even if something new is done and it doesn't work out, at least you guys all know we're actively doing shit, testing stuff and seeing what does and doesn't work. Even if stuff happens to not work out, that process of trial and error is better than making promises we don't end up keeping, because then it starts to look more like we're sitting around on our asses and not doing anything, even if it wasn't true.

 

I could have sworn I had more to say when I started typing this but that's long-gone. Oh well.

[Jokuc 8,173]

We hate it, you hate it, everyone hates it.

 

 

Anyways, I suppose it was all for the best. Personally I liked the character limit but so many people don't and not listening to the members is just going to end up with a bunch of annoyed users. At least it's back to the way it was before we got the character limit, I remember it like if it was yesterday...

 

I really do hope that users will try to keep at least an overall okay quality on their posts and not just spam all over the place. If you look at the picture below, 19% of all posts on MLP Forums had under 5 characters during the time period of the launch of MLP Forums to July 2012.

 

 

 

Let's try to improve the numbers of posts with more characters in a new graph, starting from now.

 

 

 

...Character limit or not, the forum is a forum about ponies and friendship and at the end of the day, a character limit is not going to make people want to post longer posts anyways. If you want to, you want to. If you don't want to then don't.

 

 

 

_wow                 ^{such change}               wow such freedom

           so future         ^{so amaze}        _{much approve}

 

 

 

(insert extra chars to be cool)

Edited November 14, 2013 by Jokuc

[Doctor XFizzle 8,669]

As an individual with a large vocabulary who was mostly unaffected by the character limit I must simply say,

 

Goodnight, sweet prince.

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 41,592]

Well, this is neat.

 

(Blah blah new character minimum blah).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[HoopHoof 137]

Oh bless the Eight Divines!!!

[CornBreadGang 514]

But seriously, though, this is a great thing. Thanks for doing it!

[Celtore 2,770]

 

With all seriousness though, I hope people will continue to take their time to write out complete thoughts. 20 characters really isn't that much... It certainly encourages responding to a topic more, but at the same time, it allows for posts five times shorter than the previous shortest post possible...

 

I guess I'm neutral, I usually don't have any trouble breaking 100 characters anyway