Regarding post #18: Just to reiterate, because the above point never got addressed.
Push: you and I actually agree on something! I knew it would happen someday if I persevered. Oh joyous day!
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I believe I did address that in Post 26 when I demonstrated that it absolutely does not happen all the time in PWI. It actually appears to never happen.
âCommunicating as men typically doâ can and should involve putting more than five seconds of thought into a reply. Weâre talking about stringing four words together, if that many. Weâre not policing grammar or spelling or even content necessarily. Simply drawing a line in the sand and setting the minimal amount of effort we expect if someone wants to contribute to a discussion on our site.
And, once again, suspensions will only be handed out if/when people decide to intentionally and repeatedly break the rules weâve put in place. That should be a very simple concept for people to understand.
[quote=âpushharder, post:41, topic:217565â]
I did notice yesterday that one of my substantive, concise, appropriate, less than 20 character posts was deleted four times yesterday for what at the time seemed for inexplicable reasons.
Now I know.[/quote]
You were sent an e-mail to the address in your profile. I sent it myself. Thatâs how communication is done with the new forum since thereâs no PM system. Though I disagree that simply saying âPatently falseâ in reply to another memberâs post is substantive or contributes to the discussion in any meaningful way.
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None, really. Thatâs when clicking the Like button wouldâve been totally fine. Think of the âLikeâ like âalohaâ. It can be taken as âI agreeâ, âThanksâ, âThatâs what I wouldâve saidâ, âGood postâ, âThat made me LOLâ, etc. Itâs not just literally âI like this post.â
Itâs very cool that youâve spread the word so much, but this really sounds like an overreaction. All the forum policies are setup to improve the overall experience for active members and lurkers (who tend to become members at some point).
Whether the policy is fixing thread titles, not allowing sources to be posted in the Pharma forum, not posting tit pics anywhere, or requiring a minimally thought-out reply in every thread, the goal is to raise the quality of the forum and keep it as one of the best discussion spots on the Web. For sure, some of those policies are âbiggerâ than others, but they all add up to make the forum what it is, one post at a time.
I donât know if my thoughts are an overreaction or not. My thoughts on this are not based on a pet-peeve though, they are based on a person of power implementing rules and punishment procedures based on their pet-peeve of short post.
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Jesus you guys take things too seriously.
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Then youâre fundamentally misunderstanding the point of the character minimum. Itâs not that I, or any other Site Admin, simply "doesnât like"short posts so weâre not allowing them.
Itâs that, at best, posts under 20 characters bring nothing beneficial to the site, in which case we lose nothing by not allowing them.
At worst, posts under 20 characters reduce the overall quality of the forum by making it easier to make meaningless posts, in which case they absolutely need to be avoided.
Was this really a problem before? Please be honest. I sure as hell never noticed it.
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Then why the fuck bother even commenting?
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As much as I dislike the 20 character rule, Iâm enjoying this thread so much more.
My solution to the rules Iâve disliked is to post less.
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This statement
Makes this statement hard for me to understand. Why not police the site so that any post that does not fall in line with the powers that be, be deleted or poster suspended? Come on, if we are going to be nit picking assholes here, letâs not be weak nit picking assholes. If a poster post something that does not contribute to the conversation how someone here sees fitâŠjust delete it or suspend them.
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Was what really a problem? Overly short posts reducing forum quality? Sure. Unnecessarily short posts can create âwhite noiseâ that disrupt/distract from a topic. Limiting the likelihood of that white noise increases the likelihood of fully engaged, interactive threads.
And, to be fair, Iâm still waiting for anyone to share an example of a sub-20 character post that was a legitimate contribution to a discussion. Terse compliments and text-based headnodding are polite, but they donât bring much else to a given discussion.
I feel like youâre seeing this as much more Big Brothery than it really is. The Mods and Admins arenât going to start making judgment calls in terms of post quality. Do you know how empty PWI would be if they did? (Kidding, kidding. Mostly.)
Setting a post minimum is, as I said before, a way to require that at least a minimum level of brain power went towards whatever a member is posting. Whether that post is a useful contribution, a helpful answer, a stupid question, or bad advice isnât the issue.
Like DBasler mentioned before (which I did mean to get back to and address, just got a little distracted though, sorry): [quote=âDBasler, post:20, topic:217565â]
There are plenty of worthless posts on here that contain information that is potentially dangerous if followed containing hundreds or thousands of characters. Yet they arenât policed.[/quote]
Those issues are actually âpolicedâ by members in how they reply to those bad/potentially dangerous posts. Or, if needed, thereâs always the Flag button that can alert a Mod/Admin to a problematic post for a double-check. But if someone posts âbadâ advice, theyâre pretty consistently called out on it by other members, which often leads to interesting/informative threads.
Yeah. T-Nation has always had a dearth of fully engaged, interactive threads.
Like I said, this was never an issue. And like Chushin said, this is a moronic, nit-picking, unnecessary, micro-managing, controlling, asinine policy.
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Chris, these post that would in the past be a one word post are now the same post only worded out longer to reach the minimum character requirement.
I would be very surprised if a poster was going to write ânice jobâ just said âfuck itâ I am not posting anything. They probably just went with âhey, nice job manâ I know the like button is in place to replace that but some people would rather write something out even if just one word rather than hit the like button.
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So why not use the self policing model for all posts? Why worry about this one problemâŠthat was never a problem like other things actually wereâŠin the first place?
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And again, to be clear, itâs still not that big of a dealâŠbut it still is all the things I said it is.
In a word: dumb.
This right here is what makes it really seem like an individuals pet-peeve is driving this instead of improving the quality of post in the threads
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All posts can be self-policed by members. The character minimum is simply a very basic first step, like a basic vetting process or pre-filter. An entirely unmoderated approach that relies totally on self-policing for every post with zero pre-exams at all is basically opening the door for chaos and a terrible forum experience.
You also said there were an âinordinate, unnecessary amount of posts that are substantive, that are under 20 characters, that have the unnecessary addendum, âpost must be at least 20 charactersâ or some iteration thereof.â
Your perspective is off.
The point remains that nothing is lost by preventing posts with fewer than 20 characters. The policy has been in effect since Day One of the new forum (almost five months already), is still in effect, and is being enforced.
People can think the policy is dumb or silly, but the very, very simple way to âbypassâ the rule is to have something worth saying before hitting Reply.
I think one of the feelings, at least with me, is that this
and
are both subjective and that is what rankles. The position that nothing less than 20 characters has value, but all of a sudden at 21 characters, it has transmogrified into something substantive, is disingenuous.
Frankly, the position should be that itâs your forum and thatâs the way you want it. End of discussion.
Trying to convince posters that subjective quality can be measured by capricious character counts is counter intuitive, a conundrum, and confuzzling.
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