Character minimums

[kevin.granade]

Continuing the discussion from Stone forge, charcoal kiln and clay kiln - do they create smoke?:

Stone forge, charcoal kiln and clay kiln - do they create smoke?

Character minimums are a clumsy and harmful substitute for a simple ban on me-too posts and spam.

Please outline the harms of character minimums, because I’m not seeing any.
Even with the post where this was raised, “No” was not a complete answer, it leaves the question mostly unanswered, because it doesn’t inform the asker about how they can find the answer for themselves in the future.

On your second point, a “simple” ban on undesirable content-free posts is:

1. Not simple. It requires explaining and enforcing the ban, likely repeatedly.
2. Contentious. People HATE having their posts removed, having requirements about what constitutes an acceptable
3. Effort-intensive. Either a mod (ONLY me as of this moment) has to take action on every single instance, or the entire user base has to be mobilized to flag offending posts.
4. Noisy. It either requires continuing messaging (somewhere?) to remind users of the ban, or replacing offending messages with a reminder about the ban, which leaves pointless messages scattered across the forums.

[Mantar]

You’re right about the idea of the “simple” ban, but character minimums are silly. Sometimes a “yes” or “no” is all that’s needed.

[kevin.granade]

I need something other than “silly” to outweigh the great deal of utility in automatically discouraging redundant and content-free responses.
What ratio of meaningful questions are completely answered with a yes" or"no"? That ratio needs to be really high for it to register as a problem worth adressing, much less disabling a useful feature.

[Mantar]

Thing is, I don’t know that that is such a useful feature, vs. just saying “cut that out” in the event somebody does show up who tends to make “me too” posts. I’ve never felt that was a major problem.

[kevin.granade]

Saying “cut that out” requires the right people to be reading the post soon enough after it’s made to matter, and both that post and the original are then cluttering the comments.

[Mantar]

Fair enough, I suppose.

[Litppunk]

trusted users = X number of posts, replies badges etc… = steadily decreasing minimum? Or complete removal?

How practical would that be?

Also really only you? You havn’t promoted the usual Rivet and the gang to help forum side? Or at least promoted so they CAN if they spot something? Why not?

[kevin.granade]

I don’t have any way of customizing it due to how hosting works, you CAN adjust this stuff with plugins, but since discourse is hosting it for me I can’t install plugins, but that means we have like a million times better uptime than if I were running it, it’s free, and I don’t spend time messing with the forum setup I could be spending on game development.

Rivet HAS permissions, but isn’t being active, to be fair though I haven’t needed help, it’s been REALLY easy to run compared to smf.

[Litppunk]

Oh. Cool, glad to hear its so much more streamlined.

You have any interest in throwing pluggins at discourse now or latter? If so what rates highest on things to change with pluggins?

[kevin.granade]

You might have missed the significance of this statement.

since discourse is hosting it for me I can’t install plugins

[RedPine]

If it’s hard to change, no worries.

We can always add extra characters if we need to, like so: __________________________________

[Litppunk]

Ah. I clearly did miss that. Whoops.