Maximum number of consecutive replies

Why is there a maximum number (I think three) of consecutive replies allowed; even if these replies are to different above posts? Can this be changed; maybe depending on trust level?

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You can quote multiple posts in one anwer. There is no need for consecutive answers.

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AFAIK this is a default setting to avoid notification noise (multiple notifications instead of just one) and encourage people to include the content in a single reply.

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and encourage people to include the content in a single reply.

this breaks threading

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I don’t understand how, could you explain?

The threading argument may only be relevant if you’re using the site in email/mailing list mode. Replying to multiple posts at once confuses the email client.

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Buenas noches.

Yo no sabĂ­a se podĂ­a hacer hasta tres respuestas consecutivas.

Yo uso los foros desde el año 2000, y en todos es una regla no hacer mĂșltiples respuestas; deberĂ­as responder a todos en una sola respuesta, usando "quote"s para cada miembro a quien respondas.

Esto, para evitar que el servicio de correo tomara como “spam” tantos correos con el mismo tema (subject).
Por ejemplo, si alguien hacia tres respuestas en un tema (topic), a la bandeja llegaban tres correos con el mismo asunto (subject), y entonces el servicio de correo lo tomarĂ­a como spam.

Por eso, sĂłlo se permitĂ­a hacer una respuesta a la vez.
Si necesitabas responder algo, y ya no podĂ­as editar el mensaje, debĂ­as esperar a que otro usuario respondiera. No podĂ­a haber dos o mĂĄs respuestas consecutivas de un mismo usuario.

No se si sea bueno o malo el permitir tres respuestas consecutivas, pero yo prefiero que sólo sea una sola respuesta, pero con varios “quotes”.

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Just as a bit of feedback, I’ve hit this limit while replying to different comments by different people at https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/user-is-deleting-many-roads-in-nicaragua/5314. It would make sense to reply to to posts at once, but there are a couple of “features”** of Discourse that prevent that. One is that each reply can only be to one other post. The other is that Discourse’s “reply” functionality (select a bit of text and hit the reply button) only works for text within one post

You can do it email-style

like this

but that’s far from ideal - it doesn’t link to the previous post or the person that made it.

** bugs of course, but if calling things like this “bugs” would upset you, please read as “features” :slight_smile:

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Your reply can only be directed to one former post, that is correct, but nevertheless you can start a “general” reply (not directed to any other user) and add as many quotes out of different posts by just marking the text and clicking on “quote” (instead of “reply”):

Quoted only for demonstration, sorry for that 


Same as above 



You could even add quotes out of other topics if that makes sense:

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So you can! Another example of “very much less than obvious” bit of UX from Discourse. When you select certain bits of text on the page (but not other bits) a bit of white on grey text appears above what you’ve selected - sometimes visible on screen, sometimes actually off the top of it(!) saying ‘"Quote’. It doesn’t look at all like a button that you can interact with. However you can click it, and if you do, what you’ve selected is quoted with a link back to it.

Presumably it doesn’t work on mobile though (no mouse).

YES WE CAN! Emo_grin_1

Nevertheless I really like this feature, much more comfortable than creating multiple partial quotes in the old forum. And even better, every reader can just click the link and unwrap the complete post which can be very helpful from time to time.

You are right and I havn’t even noticed it yet 
 shame on me. On my screen this happens, when I mark a textline directly beneath the toolbar of the browser which I normally don’t do.

No idea, as my poor eyes and plump fingers are not adjusted to work on the display of smartie 
 :cry:

It does work on mobile, you just need to select the text and touch the button.

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If it is a default setting, can it be changed? The max.-3-answers rule stops users to give a continuous update to a certain topic, like here. The result is a second topic with the same content which does not really make sense and is against the general rules. The only workaround would be to open a second user account to continue after the 3rd post which is not encouraged for this forum.

As there are very very few topics affected by the problem of more than 3 consecutive replies anyhow it would make sense to skip this default setting (if possible) and just observe if any problems arise in future. There was no such restriction in the old forum and it worked well for many years so why shouldn’t it do here?

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It could be limited to a maximum number of (three?) consecutive posts in a time period (a week?) to avoid spam but to give the possibility of updates.

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The Etiquette Guidelines say we should always assume “good faith”. Doing so we have to assume that the users of this forum are are disciplined enough to handle consecutive replies and would not start to misuse this option once the restriction is skipped (which they did not do in the “old” forum as well btw.)

Should the “good faith” prove to be misplaced in this case and users start to post dozens of consecutive replies all over the place THEN we should think about a limitation, not before.

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Hi, I have to push up this thread again.

In the German part of the forum, there is a thread about the “Schwerpunkt der Woche” (translated something like “Mapping priority of the week”). It is “managed” by user @kmpoppe, who wants to post the latest “Schwerpunkt der Woche” to that thread.

However, he reported to me that Discourse won’t let him, because of too many consecutive replies. For a purely informative thread that doesn’t really rely on feedback from other users, that’s an inconvenient limitation.

@kmpoppe’s last post was three weeks ago and he never posts more than once a week. In my opinion this is far away from “notification noise”.

I would therefore like to ask once again to please deactivate the restriction of several consecutive posts. At least until it becomes clear whether there are any noticeable “notification noise” problems at all without the restriction, as said by @Map_HeRo in post #13.
Or, as suggested by @Nielkrokodil in post #14, link the restriction to the time elapsed since the last post so that an update can be given at least once a week.

Workaround for now is that I create a “dummy post” which I will then delete again after @kmpoppe has created his next post. But THAT really is notification noise.

Best regards
Shaun das Schaf

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Maybe Discourse is designed to discourage this kind of evergreen thread in favor of posting each “Schwerpunkt der Woche” as a separate topic in the category with a schwerpunkt-der-woche tag. This would make it easier for community members to skim recent priorities, but it would introduce some noise for people who don’t want to see these priorities.

I wasn’t aware that this is such a controversial topic. Maybe changing for a “Schwerpunkt der Woche XX” Thread everytime could be an interesting concept.
@Shaun_das_Schaf Could you please rename t/89445 to something like “Schwerpunkt der Woche (Archiv bis April 2023)” or something and mention that we’ll be using new threads from now on with the tag that @Minh_Nguyen mentioned?
Thx.

And then Discourse will nag you every time you write that your new topic is very similar to an older “Schwerpunkt der Woche” and whether you wouldn’t rather continue the old topic.
No, that is not a solution.

As I’m creating these posts using the API, as long as that “nagging” isn’t a hard error that stops me from creating the post (which the 3-posts-rule is), at least that point wouldn’t bother me.

We might not be able to find a cardinal solution right now and that’s fine. I will start using the new concept (I need a solution today, because the new voting starts today at 1200 CEST) and see where it leads me.

Thanks for your concern nevertheless, @Mammi71 !

K