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May 11, 2014 12:59 PM
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To those of you who have been on a vBulletin Forum or some other forum architectures, you most likely know what character limit is. For everyone else, character limit is a modification to forum posting ability. Simply put, unless a post or thread exceeds a certain amount of characters, the system will not let it go through. What this would essentially do is eliminate 99% of spam, quote chaining, and a good deal of listing for the simple fact that the user would no longer be able to post such replies. The reason I suggest this is because a lot of spam is posted on this forum daily. This quality if life modification would instantly stop most of it, giving the staff a bit more breathing room while improving the overall quality of replies being posted on a daily basis.

Now, onto the downsides: obviously if a user posts a lot of ^, +1, THIS, or other such posts, they would be unable to. I can see some people taking issue with that. Secondly, the amount of moderators we have now may be a tad redundant if spam ceases to be in such an extreme way since other then spam, the only common issue is quote towers. Very little trolling or other abuse happens on this forum, it's mostly spam. Moreover, what amount of characters would be enough? 10 sounds okay to me, but what do you all think?

Thoughts? I'm well aware of how coding takes forever here, and the other posts that inevitably will find their way to this suggestion like so many others. Still, I believe that if spam doesn't calm down or increases, then this would be the best way to get rid of it.
May 11, 2014 2:01 PM
#2

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That would basically ruin the forum game board, but besides that I don't really see an issue.
May 11, 2014 2:04 PM
#3

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This is a bad idea because I've seen a lot of people put a lot of effort into writing long posts. I'd be pretty pissed if I wrote something long and then couldn't post it

It would also increase double posting creating more work for the mods
May 11, 2014 2:06 PM
#4

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JD2411 said:
This is a bad idea because I've seen a lot of people put a lot of effort into writing long posts. I'd be pretty pissed if I wrote something long and then couldn't post it

It would also increase double posting creating more work for the mods


It's exceeds a certain number of posts.
May 11, 2014 2:08 PM
#5

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Sounds excellent if you could implement it to NOT work on (what Cupquake said) the forum games section

JD confirmed for not reading post



Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
May 11, 2014 2:19 PM
#6

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I'd actually like this, then I wouldn't have to look through all of Aylaine's reports. Jk don't hurt me. But there's some sites that do this as you stated and it can be a plus; however, it would need to be set for everything but say like the Game Section.
May 11, 2014 2:40 PM
#7

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Cupquake said:
JD2411 said:
This is a bad idea because I've seen a lot of people put a lot of effort into writing long posts. I'd be pretty pissed if I wrote something long and then couldn't post it

It would also increase double posting creating more work for the mods


It's exceeds a certain number of posts.
Today is opposite day
May 11, 2014 7:29 PM
#8
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Gomen. Forum Games would have to be excluded for obvious reasons. I'm not quite sure how this would work if coded from the ground up but given how custom MyAnimeList's construction is, perhaps it would be possible to enable/disable it on a section by section basis? Regardless of all that techno talk, I appreciate all of your replies so far.
May 12, 2014 6:47 AM
#9

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It actually wouldn't eliminate that much SPAM. The average SPAM post, as in linking to external sites in order to watch movies or download games, has more characters than most posts in this thread so far.
May 12, 2014 6:57 AM

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Yeah, let's kill all of those games in the Clubs. Forum Games board is not the only board that has them - various massive community clubs also include them and it's what makes them active. Such a change would kill an extremely high activity members of the clubs bring, which are also one of the most active MyAnimeList users in general.

In other words, I cannot say I dislike the idea, but the effect would be far higher than one could imagine by thinking for just a few seconds or simply not knowing all the sides of MAL as a community website.
May 12, 2014 7:01 AM

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The spam she's talking about are one liners that doesn't contribute any discussion at all... well, most of the time that is. (eg. THIS, *character's name* <3, +1, lol, great chapter/episode, this sucks.. etc)

This would indeed reduce the number of spams I'm deleting and would also boost the quality of each post we have in every board. Excluding this system in the Game Boards and Clubs is as easy as counting 1,2,3, however, as we all aware of, this may take forever to implement.
May 12, 2014 7:07 AM

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julyan04 said:
Excluding this system in the Game Boards and Clubs is as easy as counting 1,2,3, however, as we all aware of, this may take forever to implement.

I was waiting for Aylaine to come in with an argument that while Forum Games posts do not count towards the overall Post Count, Clubs do, making the counter useless that way, which is true. Issues that would appear onward are shared in my previous post.
May 12, 2014 7:34 AM

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Subpyro said:
julyan04 said:
Excluding this system in the Game Boards and Clubs is as easy as counting 1,2,3, however, as we all aware of, this may take forever to implement.

I was waiting for Aylaine to come in with an argument that while Forum Games posts do not count towards the overall Post Count, Clubs do, making the counter useless that way, which is true. Issues that would appear onward are shared in my previous post.
I was greatly baffled when I posted in a forum game in one of the clubs I'm in and my post count increased. Yup, it do seems that the post count is useless that way. However, this is on a higher difficulty to code compare to excluding the character limit in the club in general. The creator of the thread must have an option to label it as a forum game; and that requires Xinil. Anyway, that's a whole different story so scratch that.

From my observation, club threads are more active than the general threads. This speaks a lot. So excluding this from the club threads is of utmost importance.
May 12, 2014 7:46 AM

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julyan04 said:
From my observation, club threads are more active than the general threads. This speaks a lot. So excluding this from the club threads is of utmost importance.

Pretty much my whole first post made on this thread speaks about that, from the activity to the greatness such a change would bring to the clubs. Yes, those threads are the most active on the entire MyAnimeList forums and the matter in question should be approached with top caution.
May 12, 2014 7:56 AM

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this would only cause a bunch of issues in order to fix a problem that isn't actually that rampant. The fact that people here need to keep finding so many exclusions to the rules is just proof that this simply isn't a good idea in the first place.

Immahnoob said:
Jizzy, I know you have no idea how to argue for shit,

tokiyashiro said:

Jizzy as you would call yourself because youre a dick The most butthurt award goes to you And clearly you havent watched that many shows thats why you cant determine if a show is unique or not Or maybe you're just a child who likes common stuffs where hero saves the day and guys gets all the girls. Sad taste you have there kid you came up to me in the first place making you look more like a kid who got slapped without me even knowing it and start crying about it to me

May 12, 2014 8:04 AM

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JizzyHitler said:
this would only cause a bunch of issues in order to fix a problem that isn't actually that rampant. The fact that people here need to keep finding so many exclusions to the rules is just proof that this simply isn't a good idea in the first place.
Spamming is actually rampant in the series discussion thread. Just head there and take a look; there's a lot of "empty" post with no coherence at all.

There's actually only two big problem with this suggestion. One is the ability to exclude this system in the forum games and club threads.. and secondly, a programmer.
May 12, 2014 9:03 AM
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this is an idiotic suggestion, as it implies responses can't be short and concise. cupquake's reply probably wouldn't have gone through, neither lime_'s.

besides, i've seen this feature on vbulletin as well. people get around it by just copy/pasting things like: ---meeting minimum character limit--- at the beginning or end of their post.
May 12, 2014 9:08 AM

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Heredity said:
this is an idiotic suggestion, as it implies responses can't be short and concise. cupquake's reply probably wouldn't have gone through, neither lime_'s.

besides, i've seen this feature on vbulletin as well. people get around it by just copy/pasting things like: ---meeting minimum character limit--- at the beginning or end of their post.
I would just end up using white text.

Short posts aren't even usually the bad ones. People usually put more effort in if they're deliberately trying to be disruptive.
May 12, 2014 10:20 AM

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Slyr3do0n said:
I would just end up using white text.

Lol. (But yeah, that's mainly the action most users would probably take, and it is not new to the forums around the world that have what this suggestion points out, either.)
May 12, 2014 10:28 AM
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Subpyro said:
Slyr3do0n said:
I would just end up using white text.

Lol. (But yeah, that's mainly the action most users would probably take, and it is not new to the forums around the world that have what this suggestion points out, either.)
size=0 is actually even more efficient, but not too many users are aware of it because any content contained within the 0 size tags is invisible unless quoted.
May 12, 2014 11:01 AM

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Heredity said:
because any content contained within the 0 size tags is invisible unless quoted.
Yeah, but not if quote is included in the post...
May 12, 2014 1:16 PM
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Subpyro said:
I was waiting for Aylaine to come in with an argument that while Forum Games posts do not count towards the overall Post Count, Clubs do, making the counter useless that way, which is true. Issues that would appear onward are shared in my previous post.

I have no comment on forum games other then that this suggestion should not apply to them for obvious reasons. Clubs too would also be avoided. I'm only talking about the forum here, as my post made no mention of clubs so I'm not sure why you were bringing that up.

Heredity said:
this is an idiotic suggestion, as it implies responses can't be short and concise. cupquake's reply probably wouldn't have gone through, neither lime_'s.

besides, i've seen this feature on vbulletin as well. people get around it by just copy/pasting things like: ---meeting minimum character limit--- at the beginning or end of their post.

They usually aren't. Most of the short and 'concise' posts as you put it are spam or listing. Very few short posts are valid. You also seem to be taking my suggestion a bit out of proportion, as I did not suggest that the limit would be high. 10-15 characters is what I would push for. Now if it's an absurd limit then your concerns hold true however I made no such indications in my first post. Even at 20 characters, both of the posts you mentioned would be just peachy after all.

Bypassing it would be easy, but a simple extension of the Spam Rules would easily deter people from doing that.

JizzyHitler said:
this would only cause a bunch of issues in order to fix a problem that isn't actually that rampant. The fact that people here need to keep finding so many exclusions to the rules is just proof that this simply isn't a good idea in the first place.

Spam accounts for 92% of all my daily reports, of which there are many. I would say it's a pretty big problem for the people who have to clean it up every day.

Slyr3do0n said:
I would just end up using white text.

Short posts aren't even usually the bad ones. People usually put more effort in if they're deliberately trying to be disruptive.

Not as bad as say, flaming or trolling. But excessively more frequent. All this suggestion would do is severely limit that frequency. Then moderators would not be dealing with spam all day, and could properly find these long, disruptive posts that you are describing. While I do see those occasionally, it's probable that they are buried under all of the spam/listing reports.
May 12, 2014 1:49 PM

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Aylaine said:
I'm only talking about the forum here, as my post made no mention of clubs so I'm not sure why you were bringing that up.

I brought it up because you didn't mention it, and because you seemingly don't realize just how much power and weight does this suggestion actually hold. Being totally precise on which boards would not be effected is of essence. I assume it's Forum Games and the Clubs right now. However, the Clubs came to the list only after I named them. It was Forum Games only on the start of the thread's discussion. And that's your answer to the question of why I brought them up.
May 12, 2014 1:55 PM

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Subpyro said:
Aylaine said:
I'm only talking about the forum here, as my post made no mention of clubs so I'm not sure why you were bringing that up.

I brought it up because you didn't mention it, and because you seemingly don't realize just how much power and weight does this suggestion actually hold. Being totally precise on which boards would not be effected is of essence. I assume it's Forum Games and the Clubs right now. However, the Clubs came to the list only after I named them. It was Forum Games only on the start of the thread's discussion. And that's your answer to the question of why I brought them up.


Well it doesn't really change anything since if you can disable the character limit for forum games you'd be able to disable it for clubs as well.

Either that or I don't understand how coding works, but whatever, if I'm wrong I'm wrong.
May 12, 2014 2:04 PM

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Cupquake said:
Well it doesn't really change anything since if you can disable the character limit for forum games you'd be able to disable it for clubs as well.

Either that or I don't understand how coding works, but whatever, if I'm wrong I'm wrong.

You've clearly missed my point. The issue I'm referring to is not something code-wise, but how the changes would effect the community if this would take action w/o the clubs being excluded. And why were they included in this discussion? Because I brought them up. For more, read my previous responses, please. The main idea is basically that this suggestion is far from being something light on the community overall as some might think at first, with the clubs I brought up being just one of the factors. Some might call that "side effects", but at the end of the day, it would happen that this "side effects" are actually bigger than the main goal of the idea itself on the start.
May 12, 2014 2:13 PM

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Subpyro said:
The main idea is basically that this suggestion is far from being something light on the community overall as some might think at first, with the clubs I brought up being just one of the factors. Some might call that "side effects", but at the end of the day, it would happen that this "side effects" are actually bigger than the main goal of the idea itself on the start.

I definitely understand the importance of clubs since I've part of several myself that are dedicated to games. They usually have a ton of activity as well.

Again, I don't get is why the limit wouldn't be disabled for clubs if they could be disabled for the games board. if it can't then the suggestion wouldn't work, but if it can it's fine.

I can't really think of any horrible side effects that could happen, unless there's some board which I don't frequent that has good one liner discussions.
May 12, 2014 2:24 PM
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Subpyro said:
I brought it up because you didn't mention it, and because you seemingly don't realize just how much power and weight does this suggestion actually hold. Being totally precise on which boards would not be effected is of essence. I assume it's Forum Games and the Clubs right now. However, the Clubs came to the list only after I named them. It was Forum Games only on the start of the thread's discussion. And that's your answer to the question of why I brought them up.

Thanks for explaining, but the fact remains that I did not consider clubs to be part of the suggestion and that is why I left them out, because they are not part of the forum, they are part of the website. That is where the difference lies. Club and Forum Rules are different, thus it stands to reason that my suggestion wasn't aimed at Clubs for that reason. Cupquake pointed out that Forum Games would suffer and so I agreed that it should not be applied there either but since it's a forum, then it was worth mentioning when brought up.. All of your concerns disappear if clubs aren't included though, and since this is a forum suggestion, not a club suggestion,

I do not see a reason to debate that point of view anymore. In the event that it could not be coded to ignore specific forums or sections of the website, then it would be a unviable suggestion. But otherwise it would be very beneficial in my opinion. Well not to spammers obviously. Also I am quite aware of the power that this suggestion holds; I have seen it's use first hand on many, many other forums. This isn't my first rodeo after all. I thank you for your concerns regarding clubs but for the reasons I stated above, this suggestion was not made for them. Only the forums.
removed-userMay 12, 2014 2:27 PM
May 12, 2014 2:40 PM

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Heredity said:
Subpyro said:
Slyr3do0n said:
I would just end up using white text.

Lol. (But yeah, that's mainly the action most users would probably take, and it is not new to the forums around the world that have what this suggestion points out, either.)
size=0 is actually even more efficient, but not too many users are aware of it because any content contained within the 0 size tags is invisible unless quoted.
Blew my fucking mind.
May 12, 2014 2:42 PM

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^ That wouldn't be a problem if the character limit is short

Also, mal could simply make doing stuff like that against the rules.
May 12, 2014 3:31 PM

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Cupquake said:
Again, I don't get is why the limit wouldn't be disabled for clubs if they could be disabled for the games board.

The limit wouldn't be disabled for clubs if no one had mentioned that the limit should be disabled for clubs.
May 12, 2014 3:59 PM

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Serhiyko said:
Cupquake said:
Again, I don't get is why the limit wouldn't be disabled for clubs if they could be disabled for the games board.

The limit wouldn't be disabled for clubs if no one had mentioned that the limit should be disabled for clubs.
Ok, but the way pyro said it made it sound like this suggestion would undoubtedly ruin clubs. He could have just said "it should also be disabled for clubs because there are a lot clubs that revolve around forum games." I get your point though.
May 12, 2014 7:22 PM
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Aylaine said:
10-15 characters is what I would push for. Now if it's an absurd limit then your concerns hold true however I made no such indications in my first post. Even at 20 characters, both of the posts you mentioned would be just peachy after all.
a 10 character requirement is pointless, you wouldn't avoid your 'spam' then. the character requirements on forums that do have them are usually much higher (in my experience).
May 12, 2014 8:26 PM

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Why? i thought everybody liked +1, LOL,Smiley face and the others :(
FragOutFire said:

Why am I a Berserk fan? All I ever experience is pain.

We are in the eclipse and Miura has sacrificed us
May 13, 2014 11:39 AM

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Aylaine said:
Thanks for explaining, but the fact remains that I did not consider clubs to be part of the suggestion and that is why I left them out, because they are not part of the forum, they are part of the website. That is where the difference lies.

I've quoted only this part of your entire response, because what you are assuming is wrong, resulting in the entire other part of the post being wrong as well. Club's forums are a part of the MAL forums. They could be seen as their own board, which they are. Therefore, your statement above totally contradicts that fact.

To elaborate, this here is the sub-board of a specific club.
Note the folders and sub-folders above, saying: MyAnimeList.net Forum »» Club Discussion »» [Club Information] Namine's Café

Moreover, this here is the universal board for the club threads, located at the MyAnimeList Forums as well, and not elsewhere on the website.
Note the folders and sub-folders above, saying: MyAnimeList.net Forum »» Recent Club Posts

In other words, club forums and the threads located in them are a part of the MyAnimeList Forum. They are not set elsewhere on the website. They are only differently directly accessed by various users around.
SubbedMay 13, 2014 11:44 AM
May 13, 2014 12:34 PM
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Heredity said:
a 10 character requirement is pointless, you wouldn't avoid your 'spam' then. the character requirements on forums that do have them are usually much higher (in my experience).

It would though, actually. The examples I gave would not be possible under a 10 character limit save for bypassing but as I previously stated, a rule against that would probably be added to deter problematic users from bypassing the system.

Subpyro said:
I've quoted only this part of your entire response, because what you are assuming is wrong, resulting in the entire other part of the post being wrong as well. Club's forums are a part of the MAL forums. They could be seen as their own board, which they are. Therefore, your statement above totally contradicts that fact.

If clubs are a part of the forum as you claim, why do they not appear on the list when I click the forum link? Clubs are governed by different rules then the forums are, none of which have anything to do with spam. There is enough distinction there by the rules to clearly tell me they are not the same thing nor should they be treated the same for this suggestion. If you were correct in your statement, then I imagine both clubs and forums would share the same rules, yet they do not. I have a feeling why you are doing this, however if I am correct then it's not something I wish to encourage so I am going to drop this point of debate now. Thanks for replying.
May 13, 2014 1:01 PM

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Clubs and forums do share the same rules. Care proving me otherwise with some sort of a link? However, what is true, is that next to the MyAnimeList Forum Specific Guidelines, Clubs can have their own rules. Still, that's only a possible edition. They must still follow each and every MAL Forums rule, making your statement a total contradiction yet again. The rules range from threads being locked when they hit 10,000 posts, all the way to the general flaming and/or trolling.
May 13, 2014 4:14 PM
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Subpyro said:
Clubs and forums do share the same rules. Care proving me otherwise with some sort of a link? However, what is true, is that next to the MyAnimeList Forum Specific Guidelines, Clubs can have their own rules. Still, that's only a possible edition. They must still follow each and every MAL Forums rule, making your statement a total contradiction yet again. The rules range from threads being locked when they hit 10,000 posts, all the way to the general flaming and/or trolling.
No, they clearly do not. Please read.

The only rules they share are Section I: General Site Guidelines as far as I can see. If they shared the same rules, there would be no need for two very distinct sets of rules for one or the other. There would be a note stating that the forum rules apply to club rules, of which there is none within the Site & Forum Guidelines. Furthermore, clubs would not be able to make their own rules if the forum rules applied to them because it would be counterproductive as well as difficult to enforce. If you still feel they are the same despite the official guidelines not suggesting anything of the sort then be my guest. It is irrelevant to this discussion now anyways.

Slyr3do0n said:
Heredity said:
Subpyro said:
Slyr3do0n said:
I would just end up using white text.

Lol. (But yeah, that's mainly the action most users would probably take, and it is not new to the forums around the world that have what this suggestion points out, either.)
size=0 is actually even more efficient, but not too many users are aware of it because any content contained within the 0 size tags is invisible unless quoted.
Blew my fucking mind.

Now this is interesting. Has anyone abused this a lot in the past?
May 13, 2014 10:08 PM

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It is irrelevant indeed. As long as you keep the clubs in mind, one huge factor this suggestion could take with it would be taken care of. But that's that, as far as I'm concerned. I do not really care about the main idea, am quite neutral on it. I just wanted to clear up the matter of the possible major side effects that could happen if this would take action on haste.

Aylaine said:
Now this is interesting. Has anyone abused this a lot in the past?

Read the white text I've posted.
May 13, 2014 10:25 PM
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Subpyro said:
Read the white text I've posted.

Heh Fair enough. The biggest bypass that I seen was just typing gibberish or '10 characters' but each forum that used character limit just placed them under the definition of spam or offtopic/junk posts as to deter people from doing it. Unsure if this due to my suggestion or because spammers are now being warned, but I am reporting far less spam then normal. It's probable that something like this may not be needed if the community avoids spamming.
May 10, 2015 11:19 AM

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Found this through search before I posted. Hey, I followed the rules! Who does that anymore on MAL, huh?

I'm not sure what the downside would be to implementing this besides time. 'Spam' posts can still occur, as mentioned above via gibberish and such, but it would reduce said spam with no contribution largely. A great positive for very little negative, as outside of Clubs and Games as mentioned above, I've never seen a 10-letter reply that adds anything whatsoever to a discussion.

Spam posts are cleaned by mods pretty regularly these days, but this change could stop a lot of them from ever occuring, which in theory also means less work for the forum mods, which can't be a bad thing.
Mar 3, 2016 1:18 AM

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haha can't believe some of these people are mods.....*facepalm* now look at forum activity...congratulation you played yourself MAL
mountainheartMar 3, 2016 1:54 AM
Mar 3, 2016 5:28 PM

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^Yeah.
The 30 character rule along with unnecessarily strict modding has lead to a steep decline in forum activity.
Either of the two mentioned above has to go, or else MAL forums will be deserted.

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