D&D proposal

[Aldgarkalaughskel]

Proposal revoked (technically wouldn't be possible to carry out).

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I'm going to try this, come hell or high water.

A good deal of the posts in the Discussion and Debate fora are nothing more than short comments of quips and quirks, another good deal of them can easily be called as 'spam'. This makes serious discussion impossible and discourages many members to post there. The moderators are doing a good job, and I'd like to ease their job by making the following proposal, that would put back the average spam output of these fora.

The minimum amount of characters per post in the Discussion and Debate fora is 200 (without spaces) - except for moderator notes.

If the wording is not correct, please help me correct it.

[Soulghast]

I support.

[Augustus Lucifer]

How do you expect users to judge how many characters are in their post? The software does not do it for you, thus each member would be required to figure out their own way to count characters just to be able to participate in discussion.

Also, how do you expect moderators to enforce this proposal? Surely, if a post had ten words in it, chances are it would fall under the prescribed amount. But are moderators then to verify each time a post does not achieve a certain character amount. This adds even more for a moderator to do because we'd then have to verify character counts on posts which are otherwise jim dandy.

Or is it that this is supposed to be a technical fix? The character count is a forum-wide setting. Forum to forum changes are not allowed within the software. I personally haven't the slightest clue if a hack would even be possible to achieve this, or how to do it if it were. At the very least, you need to find a hack which does all of this, because this isn't something the tech branch needs to fiddle around with for the utility.

I'm going to leave this generic comment here. If you see a post which you feel adds nothing to the discussion, you are free to report it. Insure that it is in violation of one of the Terms of Service or rules of the specific debating areas. The phrase "Obama wins!" is not spam, nor does it need to have further extrapolation, assuming it is within the proper topic. Going character crackdown on the DnD is not the way to decrease the interchanges.

[Pontifex Maximus]

That's a hefty number. I would support 100 before I supported that. Sometimes points can be made without being so wordy, and how is this supposed to be enforced?

[Aldgarkalaughskel]

Thanks for the feedback, Ludwig, Augustus and Ponti.

@Augustus: I wouldn't expect mods to enforce this, I thought it could be technically enforced, because I thought the software could enable this option. Guess I was wrong. :hmmm:

I revoke my proposal.

[Desperado †]

Yes, 200 hundred is a big number. Especially if you are in a hot debate with somebody and need to post fast. We might end up with waffling just to get past the 200 mark which is a waste of reading time and forum space, just as the spam is, defeating the whole idea. Quality over quantity despite it being accepted that it often goes hand in hand in the D&D.

I would support 100, or even 50. Like I said in a hot debate topic you don't want waffling.

I think perhaps even more important than the number of words is the evidence it is backed up by. This should be encouraged, especially in O.P.

Yes, I think I'd support 50. 200 is by far too much. But with 50 we can easilly delete those annoying 1 line or three word posts that add nothing to the debate. 100 posts and we'd end up with people repeating themselves over and over again, wasting time just to get past the 200 mark, which is a waste of reading time and forum space, just as these spam posts are. Quality over quantity of course. We don't want people just saying endless stuff to get past the 200 mark.

Although it is of course accepted that quality and quantity often go hand in hand in the D&D. But we don't want waffling. I'd support 50, which means we can easilly delete those pesky 1 line posts. But we don't want people repeating themselves again and again. its a waste of reading time.

But 200 is too much. It means people will be repeating themselves. And that can be very annoying. But with 50 it would be obvious to the mods which posts to delete (the 1 line ones and those three word posts. Making the minimum 200 could be annoying, as people would go on and on about the same thing.