New Minimum Character Count For Replies.

why are u even limiting how short and long our posts can be? It seems like a control-ist thing to do. Kinda like R.A.T.S,. A secret forum for a de-info websie? A website dedicated to release info and discuss, and here u are making a forum to hide info.

the above is from a blog post that links to a larger article here

how serendipitous that I would stumble across this

I'm disappointed in the implimentation of this rule.

While I understand the need to discourage minimal replies which clutter up things, I'm all for quality over quantity. I feel that arbitrary content requirements will only end up with people padding replies, which defeats the whole purpose. Anyone remember writing school essays with word number requirements?

ATS' early attempts at character counting went through several preparations. Preparations A through G were a complete failure. But now, ladies and gentlemen, we finally have a working character counting system, which we shall call... Preparation H.

Frau Farbissina: Yah. It's a really good plan.
Dr. Evil: Yes Frau, on the whole Preparation H feels good.

Dr. Evil: What is it now?
Scott Evil: No, I totally agree with you. Preparation H does feel good... on the hole.

I'm getting the 2,000 characters required indicator when trying to quote other contributors ... I'm using Firefox v 3.0.8, the only add ons I use are Download Helper, Interclue, Ubuntu Firefox Modifications and Speed Dial.

It's a little bit frustrating.

I understand why this new rule has been introduced for ATS. But for BTS ? I don't get that at all.

I can agree with this post. I also find it interesting that with over 100 replies, there has been no Moderator comment since the first page or so. As they say, the silence is deafening. And am I paranoid, or is implementing this policy on what may be considered a relatively "low traffic" day (Easter) a bit telling? Then again, I am a bit paranoid

I suppose I understand the desire to have meaningful posts instead of a bunch of "Amen brother" one line posts, but surely you must all realize that just requiring a minimum posting length will not achieve the desired effect.

Maybe it's just me but it seems that in reality the most nonsensical (dare I say crazy?) posts are the longest. Most of the time I skip the very longest posts because there is nearly nothing of value in those. They tend to be either long rambling diatribes against society or else the rantings of someone (hmmm......how to say it?) - someone who's interpretation of reality is somewhat different than that of most people.

As for the idea that a short post can't convey a worthy idea I will offer only the following:

"I think therefore I am"

"Give me liberty or give me death"

"e=mC^2"



[edit on 12-4-2009 by total_slacker]

[edit on 12-4-2009 by total_slacker]

Could we perhaps be given the ability to buy back some characters for ourselves by spending ats points ? Maybe letting us go down to 100 or even 50 characters through inclinations of 10.

That way long term posters would be able to show that they in general can be trusted with shorter replies, you could even make it so that mods could take the ability back off of people who go on to abuse it, without the ability to purchase it again.

Even though I agree with the principle behind this decision, long term it is going to harm your site and your business.

reply to post by scooterstrats

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Its a valid point that it being a low day, there arne't that many mods around, but hey, SO was on 19 mins ago apparently, but he hasn't come back to comment on the thread. I'm sure that given the points made in this thread that a concensus is being mounted in mod/admin county of what to do and we'll here back when they've made a descision. Or something like that...

What is the difference in your post and his? Both used a filler.

Will the T&C define what is deemed 'filling a post'? Is the same character repeated more than twice in sequence a violation but a filler phase is not. Very much like the 'second line' method previously used.

I was only required to have 75 characters since I used a quote and did not alter it. (quote bonus, no penalty since I did not change it).

*******************NEWS FLASH******************

Apparently William Shakespeare was wrong.

"Brevity is NOT the soul of wit."

And to add two words. New Coke.

The button says I need 19 more characters.

New mantra: YOU MUST DENY IGNORANCE IN 200 WORDS OR MORE.

(I was on ATS for Easter and all I got was this crummy new rule.)

Regards.....KK

[edit on 12-4-2009 by kinda kurious]

[edit on 12/4/2009 by RubberBaron]

How about just letting us mark posts as not contributing? After a certain negative "score" is reached, the post is just hidden or removed completely? Preferably it would just be hidden, while allowing users to be able to display it again on a per-user/client basis.

That way, all the BS can be hidden while removing the posters ability to whine about censorship, etc. Since it will be controlled by the user majority.

I just tried to use the "quote" function, and before I typed anything, it said I needed only 1713 characters to go!

I think there might be a few bugs in this new system.

Hang on, need 28 more characters. Got 'em!!

reply to post by Comatose

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That's is a good idea in theory but that could easily be abused by members. Skeptics could mark believers threads as useless and the other way around.

Not trying to be a smarty pants, here but that reply answered his question directly to the point and I still needed 11 characters to post. This is the problem that the members are having with the new system.

I don't think it matters that the system is easily exploitable, so are the bad word filters, but people still get a warn or whatever if they break it. Someone said it needs to be server side, which true, would make it not so simply exploitable, but would also add load which I'm sure ATS can do without.

I kind of prefer the old way anyhow, if you made a scheißepost it would be blocked and you might get a warn or points lost. That way people could make a one line post if that's all that was needed, and it summed it up well, but if it was just "LOL" or something, they'd get punished.

reply to post by Ant4AU

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Even if people abuse it, you'd still be able to display the hidden post and vote the score up if you do think it's actually useful.

Obviously if the poster thinks there's abuse, he/she will say something about it which will result in people viewing the post and possibly rating it back up.

I think abuse would be easy to identify/rectify and probably less problematic than this character requirement stuff.

I really dislike this idea, I see it on slashdot, digg, youtube etc, and it leads to you only seeing the groupthink approved posts. On a site like ATS I think it's even more important to give minority views their fair shake.

reply to post by RubberBaron

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Maybe posts that reach the vote threshold can be submitted to administrators for 'approval' ? That could help with admin work load, since they won't have to read over each little post and decide whether it contributes or not.

Then again, it might create extra work. Depends on how things are done at the moment and the quality of information ATS is aiming for.

So kinda a balance between automated/manual.

[edit on 12-4-2009 by Comatose]

[edit on 12-4-2009 by Comatose]

Ok I have a question about this change, how will this effect perfectly on point short answers such as a scenario where say a video posted was removed by youtube and in the heat of a thread some member finds a copy and posts the link to said video such as what happened here The member did the thread a service by providing a new link to the video, obviously that was their point, short post? yes valuable? absoluty.