New Minimum Character Count For Replies.

reply to post by hephalump

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As I reply to you at this moment I needed 160 characters to get my posting to post, I am still 65 away, so now yet this is another amount I was told I needed.

Yes I understand the reply to above includes the poster I am replying to, name, but again NO standard is set, no matter how or to who I am replying to.

I standard needs to be in place with set characters (which to me 200 is excessive - I mentioned above).

So yes, I am testing this new rule and I still don't understand way the variations as I reply to various people.

1000 characters is completely excessive, I would assume that is definitely a glitch, wow, otherwise, there will be no debates in those, might as well not even bother to set a thread up, where everyone who posts has to do a 1000 character post.

All this new rule means is that I have to find a more verbose way of responding.

So instead of saying:

No MrNickname, i completely disagree because of blah blah blah

I have to say

No offense intended MrNickname but I must say that I completely and wholeheartedly disagree with your kind self because of yada yada yada...

Kinda seems pointless. Fodder will still be fodder no matter how many letters is has to express itself.

IRM

reply to post by Sanity Lost

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Why exactly does it matter, if you're not a one-line poster? Why should you feel "punished" if you don't want one line posts anyway? 200 characters amounts to 3 lines. Are you really complaining about not being able to post two lines, while recommending that one-line posts punished with point deductions?

its like trying to legislate morality

whos the judge of a relevant meaningful post?

i for one can say a whole lot of nothing in a tremendous amount of words

i guess the useful advice "brevity is the soul of wit" means something different?

so feel free to pad your comments with as many empty words you can

'long winded' for the sake of hard drive space and database efficiency


edit

it just occurred to me

the more words

the better the google results?

huh?

[edit on 12-4-2009 by cranberrydork]

reply to post by InfaRedMan

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Oh, you have given me such a good laugh with your post!! How absolutely polite. OH, maybe that is what they are trying to do, get us to add extra words - which will make us more polite in disagreements?

I understand the desire for well thought out purposeful posts, but long winded repetative nonsense for the sake of "volume" will make reading tiresome and boring. Not in all case but many.

What about the writers forums? Will poem lengths etc be subject to this rule?

The problem here, as far as I can tell, is that what is between the two (or four, etc) quote tags isn't what is counted, it is the count between the quote tags at the start of making the post that counts. I don't know much about PHP I'll admit, but there must be way to count how many characters were removed (by me, in this instance) on the client side of the system so that large numbers of required characters doesn't become an issue. Obviously, I could hit post reply in another tab, and then cut and paste this across to that tab and do it that way, but that must hit your servers harder since I'm performing two operations instead of one. If there were, for instance, an intermediate stage of quoting where the user selects what they actually want of the post before getting onto the post reply screen, this could help or;
The counter could reset itself if only selection and backspace/deletion operations are performed until the user starts adding things. This way, I wouldn't have needed to type some 1000 characters in order to post this reply. Still, this did mean I got the point across better, I think.

Edit to add:
From this post, this explains why he needed 1000 characters.

[edit on 12-4-2009 by apex]

I really fail to understand how a three line minimum equates to long-winded, overly verbose, pointless posts. It just means that you have to consider your posts for more than half a second. Yes, certain points can be made in a single line. Usually, if a point is made in a single line though, it requires the context of a quote, or "reply to" link to be a complete response.

And I'm usually the one being accused of complaining for the sake of complaining.

reply to post by Unit541

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That is not my point with this whole new rule set, just as I started with responding to you, I needed 163 characters to respond. MY point is there is NO consistency with posting and characters needed. I would not be so frustrated with this new rule if it was a consistent characters needed to post.

No matter any manner or way of our posting, there needs to be only one standard. What ever character amount, needs to be across the board, not for one way or another.

I have not yet gotten a one amount of characters needed except for the generic reply to button at the top or bottom of the page.

There in lays my problem, and I will definitely have a problem when I am required to do 200 characters, yet I will see some one liners.

This will also set the mods up for running back and forth to threads, due to people complaining, they had to do a 200 character post - yet others got by with less.

I see lots more working coming for the mods from this new rule, due to people's frustrations, possibly doing "posting alerts" alot.

What will that do to the threads? Have lots of T&C violation postings in them? With very few actual postings, because the rest have been taken away by the mods, because they were a required character min? Especially since it seems some people will learn how to get around it?






[edit on 12-4-2009 by questioningall]

reply to post by SkepticOverlord

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Here go those one word killers accompanied with pictorial explanation worth of thousand of words . . .

e = mc^2

What else is there to it?

A: need 5 more characters.

/SUBMIT REPLY/

e = mc^2 + at^s

I like this Idea.

There are so many lame posts on ATS sometimes its hard to keep a thought going. Three pages of people saying not much more than a sentence makes it tough to add to any conversation.

Besides its not like he is asking us to write a book, just to put a little more thought into what we are saying.

reply to post by InfaRedMan

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Indeed expressing one's self tautologically could be used to feign germane, thoughtful and pertinent expression. Repetition of the same or similar ideas and meanings in two or more forms could make it seem as though one has something significant to contribute.

reply to post by EnlightenUp

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LOL! That was rather humorous but I've found myself a really cool work around. From now on I will sign off on my posts with:

S U P E R C A L L A F R A G I L I S T I C E X P I A L L A D O C I O U S

IRM

reply to post by Blogstalker

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That is a good question, a Haiku would be impossible under this system.

old pond . . .
a frog leaps in
water’s sound

After that I still needed 37 characters.

Sometimes one line is all you need man.

hell, even one word.... but i do understand, to some extent, why the staff have decided to do this.
There are usually so many one word, one line posts that add nothing to the discussion, and add all these pointless one word/one line posts together...and that is many pages of useless crap on a thread.

Ends up being tiresome reading through pages of drivel.

But, as i said in my one liner at the top.... it's all you need sometimes.
Perhaps a happy medium?

I dunno.

Obvious flaw...

*EDIT* Edited because it would seem you don;t want us to point out the incredibly obvious flaw in imposing a character limit. And in editing this reply, i've just noticed the other flaw of this system. As my later posts in this thread attest, nice idea, but wrong way of doing it, and in my personal opinion, uneccesary anyway...

[edit on 12-4-2009 by Vector J]

reply to post by Vector J

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Sorry, but had to be done. If I can work it out then it's fairly evident. I agree that its ridiculous with people typing a couple of words then hitting return and typing 'This is a second line', but equally I see one liners that seem to slip through the net. A character limit is useless for qualities sake as I just proved and others in the thread have also.

Nice idea, wrong way to do it, IMHO...

This new program does not seem to recognize the copy and paste work that I do in my word program.
I do this frequently so that I do not lose all my hard work and research, like up to an hour, thru some technical problem, as has been known to happen.
Like "windows has encountered a problem and has to shut down."
Or the internet drops off - "Page cannot be displayed".

Here in the United States Of America, partiucularly in the Glorious State of Ohio, nobody seems to be responsible for him- or her- self. This means that Society as a whole must pay for the errors of selfish, uncaring lawbreakers.
Perhaps that is behind the reasoning of our new Character Count. It will help us to police ourselves better.

currently I'm trying to reply in another thread.

The post I'm trying to reply to is nine lines long but for some reason I'm being told that I need 2025 more characters before I can post my reply.

If this is some sort of glitch in code, no big deal but I'd like to know if it is a glitch or if this is how the site is going to be from now on.

2025 is approx. 20% of the MAXIMUM number of characters that can be posted.