Minimum length post (20?)

This restriction seems to cause hassle and silliness for lots of users from time to time.

If someone asks a simple question, there should be no objection to answering “yes” or “no” rather than having to answer e.g. “yes (pad to 20 chars)”

Is it possible to reduce or remove the minimum?

Do people agree or disagree that the minimum should be reduced or removed?

My favourite silly workaround is to add   (as many times as needed) as that keeps the forum software happy while not confusing the reader with things like “pad to 20 chars”.

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As long as the post makes sense. If there must be a minimum, make it one character. I can’t imagine a single-character post making sense, but maybe that just says something about my imagination.

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Yes, I agree it should be removed.
The adding of whatever just to make the
20 characters doesn’t make sense.

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Posts making sense is desirable but this limit isn’t guaranteeing that and on occasion it is having the opposite effect by forcing the user to add extraneous meaningless characters (which is why I at least make my extraneous characters invisible).

A user might wish to withdraw an erroneous post by editing it down to a single character e.g. hyphen or x but there is room for debate about what the reduced minimum should be.

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It would be interesting to hear what the original intent of the 20 character limit was.

If it was to encourage more meaningful responses, it does not achieve that, as we all know, due to the ease of padding.

It seems pointless to keep it for that instance.

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There could be single character posts such as…

Y or N

:+1:or :-1:

:white_check_mark: or :x:

Choice possibly needs to assess whether a post could just be agreement or disagreement using one or few characters…or require posters to contribute to the thread (namely engage with others)…such as why they agree or disagree. I possibly prefer the latter as it provides explanation to why a particular view or opinion is made.

The other thing is the like button possibly shows agreement from the person clicking on like. This option already exists so does one need an alternative option?

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I think it’s the default behaviour for this particular forum software - so it may not have been the intent of anyone at Choice. I don’t know whether that behaviour can be changed. I hoped that someone at Choice or someone else who has installed that software would know.

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Some forums may try to avoid that. A string of :+1: and :-1: replies is something that they may want to avoid, in favour of “like” (where it is counted automatically) or an explicit poll. As you suggest, there is no “dislike” button however.

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Some amusing replies on the same topic …

The minimum character requirement doesn’t always result in useful posts of course …

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Thanks. Your link does then answer part of the original question … can it be changed? Yes

and tells you how to do it (as an administrator of the forum).

It also sheds light on some of the motivation.

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I think naming competitions are the most
challenging in keeping to the 20 characters while trying to find an appropriate title.
That’s where I notice some creative padding :wink:

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That was the straw that broke the camel’s back and led to this topic.

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These are possibly a rarity rather than norm…and yes, one can add some #####characters#### to get to the minimum 20 required. However some characters have different functions in discource…such as 2+ * at each end which turns text bold.

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yep.

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

By Lewis Carroll

Contents

|[CHAPTER I.] |Down the Rabbit-Hole|
|[CHAPTER II.] |The Pool of Tears|
|[CHAPTER III.] |A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale|
|[CHAPTER IV.] |The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill|
|[CHAPTER V.] |Advice from a Caterpillar|
|[CHAPTER VI.] |Pig and Pepper|
|[CHAPTER VII.] |A Mad Tea-Party|
|[CHAPTER VIII.] |The Queen’s Croquet-Ground|
|[CHAPTER IX.] |The Mock Turtle’s Story|
|[CHAPTER X.] |The Lobster Quadrille|
|[CHAPTER XI.] |Who Stole the Tarts?|
|[CHAPTER XII.] |Alice’s Evidence|

CHAPTER I. Down the Rabbit-Hole

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice ‘without pictures or conversations?’

So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

[edited to reduce the clutter …]

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… apparently there is also an upper limit … so there is a limit to how much you can pad to reach 20 … so to speak …

image

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

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The idea behind the character limit is to generally encourage more meaningful replies .However, there’s obviously cases where it doesn’t make sense to have such a limit. The good news is that it is something we can change, if that is the way everyone want to go. We’ll keep an eye on this topic, if there are no arguments against changing the limit we will make the appropriate changes.

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If you change it and you don’t like the outcome, or there are unforeseen consequences, you can always change it back again.

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Exactly. We’re always happy to make changes when needed, so feel free to make suggestions at any time :slight_smile:

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We could up the ante and make it 500 ?

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:joy: Sounds like an interesting challenge

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