Minimum post length

[nukeador (Rubén Martín)]

@yrtimiD

… (20 char min limit? Wtf?)

It’s a default Discourse setting to avoid messages to be just “OK”, “Yes” or “I agree” and incentive more meaningful conversations. Message reactions (such as likes) can help express agreement without adding additional message noise to a topic.

[dieterdreist]

@yrtimiD

(20 char min limit? Wtf?)

+1, ridiculous
sggtfhutghjghjgf

[nukeador (Rubén Martín)]

@dieterdreist moving this to a new topic under #site-feedback to avoid noise on the category request.

Adding some context from Discourse site about this (worth reading to form an opinion on pros and cons)

Why bother with the minimum character requirement for replies?

[dieterdreist]

They say it: “just add a little bit more”. This feature makes people add characters even if they have been able to say everything they wanted to say in a very concise way, just to climb the artificial limit.

[nukeador (Rubén Martín)]

Yes, sometimes. The good thing is that this is a configurable setting, if this turns up to be an issue for a lot of people in these forums, it can always be changed.

I would advise to use it as it is for now, and see once there are more communities here using the forums to take an informed opinion, observing how positively and negatively affects the conversation dynamics.

[rmikke (Ryszard Mikke)]

Maybe the message should contain something like “please use reactions if you simply want to show approval/disapproval”?

[Martin_Borsje]

What is wrong with an answer: “Thank you, I agree”. Some people like this more than emoticons etc.

[seichter]

That’s ok if you prefer that.
But ist’s 18 keyboard clicks longer than an emoji and btw shorter than the actual minimum of 20.

[Martin_Borsje]

That’s the whole point of this topic; or should I write: “Thank you, I agree##”?

[dieterdreist]

As there haven‘t been indications so far that this feature has positive effects, my suggestion would be to turn it off immediately. Or maybe make it a setting for every category and have local communities decide for themselves, if this is possible?

[Mammi71 (One feature, Six mappers and still More ways to map it)]

According to a survey in the German forum, 80 % of the participants are in favour of a reduction of the minimum number of characters and still a good half are in favour of a de facto abolition.

[UMFRAGE] Minimum length in postings

Weil sich jetzt offensichtlich schon mehrere an der Minimum Zeichenzahl gestört haben: scheinbar lässt sich auch diese Option einstellen. Ich hatte da an anderer Stelle bereits geschrieben: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/minimum-post-length/2443/7?u=mammi71 Frage: was halte Ihr denn für sinnvoll? (PS: streicht das “unbedingt” aus der ersten Frage gedanklich, ist etwas zu reißerisch, die Umfrage selbst kann ich nicht mehr ändern) poll

I see the minimum character length the same way as @dieterdreist:

• a proof that this improves communication has not been provided so far
• in the old forum without minimum character length I could not observe any disadvantages
• it prevents short polite thank-yous, which is rather detrimental to good communication.
• emojis are only a conditionally suitable substitute for it
• it encourages the typing of meaningless characters to meet the minimum character length requirement
• the latter leads to reports to the moderators (flag the post) of such postings for circumventing the forum rules.

@dieterdreist

my suggestion would be to turn it off immediately. Or maybe make it a setting for every category and have local communities decide for themselves, if this is possible?

PS: Übersetzung mit Deepl

[nukeador (Rubén Martín)]

@Mammi71

the latter leads to reports to the moderators (flag the post) of such postings for circumventing the forum rules.

There is nothing in the forum rules about this, it’s a default setting to avoid noisy replies just to say “Yes”, “No”, “Thanks” “lol”… and everyone subscribed to the category or topic getting notified about this, which is quite annoying in my personal opinion.

If we imagine a topic with 10-15 replies that includes just that, what’s the value for the rest of the people reading?

If the goal of a “thank you” message is just to show gratitude, why not use the reactions button to show it to the poster and everyone else, but avoid a ton of irrelevant notifications/emails to dozens or hundreds of people?

At the end, what we need to think here is if we want (and encourage) this to be a discussion forum or a chat-style type of conversation where we might get notifications about non meaningful replies.

[seichter]

@nukeador

If the goal of a “thank you” message is just to show gratitude, why not use the reactions button to show it to the poster and everyone else, but avoid a ton of irrelevant notifications/emails to dozens or hundreds of people?

The whole discussion startet when people tried to give a “+1” as usual in the old forum.
A response by from the reaction button would suffice - if it would work. I always got a when I tried it which imho is something different (see “thumbs up”-discussion).

To my opinion the quality of an answer can’t be estimated by its length and can’t be augmented by a minimum length.

In former times one of the mayor requests to a good user interface was “don’t mode me”. But that may have changed by the conditions of a gamified brave new world .

[nukeador (Rubén Martín)]

BTW, I think I managed to fix the bug.

[seichter]

Thanks. I just tried it - it works.

[dieterdreist]

now minlength
.,~_,~,~,

[nukeador (Rubén Martín)]

@seichter

To my opinion the quality of an answer can’t be estimated by its length and can’t be augmented by a minimum length.

I personally disagree, one or two words are not a quality answer, they are just a quick reaction that don’t add much to the conversation, that’s why reactions are a good way to show quick reactions and replies are a good way to expand the discussion.

Just imagine this same reply as a “No, I disagree”

[Mammi71 (One feature, Six mappers and still More ways to map it)]

No, I don’t agree with you!

[Mammi71 (One feature, Six mappers and still More ways to map it)]

And, what has been gained with the minimum number of characters now? Right! Nothing!
How many characters do you need at least to force a high-quality answer?

If it has no positive effect on a more qualified discussion, then you can do without it.

And there is no emoticon for “thank you”, “thumbs up” is not the same.

Maybe I’m already part of the old generation who still learned that you say please and thank you. And “Thank you!” is a complete sentence in many languages. It corresponds to my idea of politeness - just as people speak to each other face to face. are nice, I use them too, but they are ultimately a gimmick.