So what you’re really angling for is a maximum quote count limit per post.
That’s actually not a bad idea, because there are a few discussion anti-patterns that aren’t accounted for in Discourse yet:
Massive disproportionality. Where reasonable multiple paragraph replies are consistently met with enormous walls of text. I remember an anti-Trump blog post I wrote on my blog (comments served with Discourse) which had this to a disturbing degree. Where do they find the time to write these enormous screeds, over and over? They will literally debate you to death, and they’ll even do it … politely. Are they like… retired people with nothing to do? Do they not have jobs in the conventional sense? Is replying to blog comments their literal full time job? I have so many questions!
Excessive, minutiae level quoting. Rather than grouping ideas together, quoting individual words or tiny snippets of sentences and going on in extreme detail about each one, repeat ad infinitum. It could be related to #1, as well, but doesn’t have to be.
I don’t like it when we miss rate limits though, and #2 is a safe rate limit to add, so I am adding that to the list of things we’ll do.
These are both somewhat rare, though, far more rare than the “I’m gonna punch the reply button as many times as I can in this topic today” guy. That guy… is literally everywhere.
I can only speak for myself - 8 out of 10 writing a massive wall of text1) has a certain connection with advanced procrastination. The other 2 out of 10 I’m really passionate about it.
1) Around here the classic term for that is Bleiwüste.
No, what I’m really, really angling for is a little more trust in the BBC community and giving them a choice. Or a wider range of choices. This is the sort of thing that tends to sort itself out amongst peers and will level out at a reasonable level.
However, I think I could learn to love what I’ve got as long as limits are not as restricting as they are now. I.e. a leash that is a bit longer.
I quite like the idea of a “speed limit”. Combine that with a liberal sized cap and everything will be peachy.
This doesn’t mean disabling any safety features, after all, so why not give it a try?
Maybe confine the experiment to user-created threads at first, to get a feel for how it might work out?
And then some. I mean, they can’t be all retired early boomers or 136,077711 kg guys in basements, they just can’t… although, in this timelime…
I don’t disagree that adding a significant time component makes it far safer, however, you could definitely grief the crap out of some topics that would normally auto-close after {x} days with this relaxed-by-time ruleset on multiple sequential replies.
(Really that’s the ultimate sealioning enabler… isn’t it? Every 16 days reply with “why won’t you respond to me in the marketplace of ideas? I shall eagerly await your response!”)
Perhaps if the relaxed time multiple sequential replies was combined with “no auto-close allowed on this topic”? Then it seems totally safe to me. Logic being, this topic operates in geologic time, it isn’t like other topics?
I guess bigger picture what I’m thinking is, if nobody but person X is posting for long periods of time … that topic honestly probably should close. Unless the topic belongs to that person.
I was just about to suggest that…
There is no need to disable the auto-close. It is safe to assume that every Mutant knows about it, and as we like to say in my neck of the woods, Wer zu spät kommt, den bestraft das Leben (Gorbi).
I have been caught out by auto-close to my dismay, but there is always the option to ask to re-open a thread if it seems really, really important (to a lot of people). Or post something in the folllw-up thread. Or start a new thread. Or post in another thread, if it’s just a mild diversion that won’t offend. Or…
I think it’s better to fix the topic owner or start a new topic by the “proper” owner in this specific case.
And solicit semi-regular participants for the topic over time! Heck even as a completely artificial outside incentive (a few PMs that say “hey, sorry to bug you, could you please find a way to check out and reply to this topic? It’s quite cool, at least I think so!”) it feels right to me.
I don’t think you give our community here enough credit. Folks here are extremely savvy to these kind of things and even in a very active topic this wouldn’t go unnoticed.
I’m not disagreeing, but just wanted to branch off a thread to ask if you have a threat model about why this particular metadata is bad? (Is it more than just the extra storage/indexing costs?)
The issue is rarely our regular users. If you go find topics where folks are posting multiple repeated replies, they are often newer community members who have chosen to be single-issue commentators. That is partly compensated for by trust levels, but if they manage to stay in the community through their first set of posts, they become TL2 and can go to town in their next one with walls of text replies or attempts to dominate the conversation.
Inevitably these users usually wear out their welcome, but as it is with so many Discourse features, it’s the bad actors out there that need these controls, not the regular members.
This is certainly the scenario where I’ve run afoul of this restriction (well, and also the Xth cat picture in a row), and I’d much prefer individual responses versus a wall of non-sequiturs punctuated by quotes from different people.
What I can see, however, is that this is part and parcel of Discourse’s hatred of threading.
based on @orenwolf’s explanation about how people can dominate, i’d support keeping the limit the way it was, if we were voting (which we’re not, my understanding it’s more of an authoritarian cyberpunk state, but relatively benevolt Singapore style not full Ürümqi)
Well, it looks good as a metric to not let sealions, et al, have walls of replies, it doesn’t change anything from a reader perspective to be faced with a single wall of text six pages long.
you pretty much hit the nail on the head here with one exception-- in those threads, which are mostly if not entirely member generated, in which the point is to share things like recipes, craft/making tips, or music reflective of idiosyncratic tastes it is the regular users who haunt those and come back to those to comment repeatedly. i wish discourse could carve out a timer setting or its equivalent for those kinds of threads.
while i don’t think anyone would really mind if someone put a recipe up a month ago then another one up two weeks later and then a third one a week or two later, at the same time i don’t think there are many who would argue with putting limits in a hot-button issue thread where someone may be trying to dominate the conversation with a half dozen comments within a few minutes.
