Maximum number of consecutive replies

The goal should definitely be to have such posts in one thread. It is easy to follow for notifications (one click vs define keyword).

1 Like

Also makes it kind of impossible to set the ā€œSchwerpunkt der Wocheā€-Thread to ignored so that it wonā€™t show up in the list of topics anymore for people who really are not interested in that topic.
Plus if you are interested in what previous mapping priorities were, you can no longer just scroll up but instead have to use the Discourse search and find the relevant topic.

And imagine a new topic everytime the OSM Software Watchlist is updatedā€¦
Hey @wambacher what do you think? I have seen that you were able to create at least 5 consecutive posts there. How so?


@kmpoppe As announced in private conversation, I have created a dummypost so that you can continue posting.

iā€™m using the Discourse API:

see Getting an API key - #36 by kmpoppe

some entries before you learn how to get that key.

regards
walter

ps: But it could also be that it only worked because I didnā€™t know about the problem :wink:

I fully agree - we should not kowtow to the software - the software should cover the requirements.
We did not need such a restriction for years in the old forum and we surely do not need it now.

3 Likes

No argument there, just wondering if the new software addresses the same need in a slightly different way. For better or worse, a lot of concepts changed between phpBB and Discourse that we donā€™t have much control over. Fighting against tools isnā€™t much funā€¦ But it sounds like relying on tags would be an uncomfortable tradeoff for the community anyways, so maybe a different solution is needed.

There are other evergreen threads like these OSMUS updates. It would be beneficial to align on a common approach to them so that visitors to these forums can track them in a consistent manner.

Let me make sure @forums-governance discuss about this request again.

Note on the suggestions some people shared about using a tag instead: People can subscribe to a tag and get notifications of new topics/replies and others can choose to ā€œmuteā€ the same tag so they are never bothered about it.

When topics within a tag have a volume big enough to be considered ā€œnoiseā€ in its parent category, the creation of separate category is advised.

Cheers.

This is a setting (max consecutive replies) that can easily be changed to something else than the default of 3 if we want to.

Personally, I believe we should change the setting. This is one of several restrictions designed to solve a problem which the OSM forum community never really had as far as I can remember, even before we moved to Discourse.

In contrast, too many topics being created for recurring content like WeeklyOSM alerts is something that was considered a problem in the past, and posting these updates in a dedicated thread is the solution weā€™ve previously arrived at.

Using a tag may be an alternative solution to the same problem, with some benefits and drawbacks compared to the single-thread solution. But I think that the choice between these solutions should be made based on what works best for the particular topic and sub-community; imo they should both be available and not prevented by the forum settings.

10 Likes

For better or worse, a lot of concepts changed between phpBB and Discourse that we donā€™t have much control over. Fighting against tools isnā€™t much fun

yes, but we donā€™t have to fight against discourse to have a lot of annoying details improved, there are some settings that could be adjusted, like removing the minimum post length, which only has created problems and useless, lenghty discussions and has been reduced from 20 to 10 characters (what still leads to people explicitly adding filler text and mocking the system) when the solution would be ā€œ1ā€ , or remove the consecutive post limit and other similar nannying measures. If any of these ever become an issue (they havenā€™t been in a decade of phpbb) we can tackle it socially, or reenable them if we believe the hazzle is less with the setting than without, but I doubt we would come to this point.

7 Likes

This argument also applies to the minimum post length.

@dieterdreist is absolutely right: Restrictions that the old forum did not have and that we never needed should be completely deactivated in Discourse.

If at some point we notice a problem and the noise increases noticeably, we can always discuss a gradual reintroduction.

full agreement: this causes more disturbing noise than a (in extreme cases) ā€˜+1ā€™.

translated with deepl

8 Likes

We have changed the maximum number of consecutive replies to 9999 and will observe if this causes any problems.

If it does cause problems, such as people overwhelming a discussion with excessive replies, we might revert to the original limit and instead encourage posters to rely on the exception that the reply limit does not apply to the topicā€™s creator, which would mostly take care of the use case of posting recurring updates. But for now, the limit is effectively disabled.

10 Likes