I honestly think we should remove the post length requirement in every category especially DMs. This is because the limit is easily bypassed anyways and from my experience it rarely encourages users to add more to their posts.
If the post is spam like “ahah” then we could always flag it for moderation.
Removing it will only incentivize further spam.
With the current limit, you have to at least try bypassing it.
It’s easy to bypass by just adding some other random letters or “30 chars” in a hidden spoiler.
I don’t see the point in keeping the limit.
Also
The last thing we want is one-letter replies.
Honestly, I don’t even understand the point of having a character limit in dms. It’s dms.
And? You can flag posts if they are spammy.
Say someone decides to reply the entire alphabet letter by letter. 26 replies to flag. No thanks.
Everybody on the DevForum has a voluntary responsibility to make the forum filled with high-quality posts/replies, by making high-quality posts/replies & flag off-topic/spammy/etc. posts.
Simply not flagging spammy posts like the entire alphabet example you provided means you’re not doing enough to keep the forum be full of high-quality discussions. It’s fine if you don’t flag posts, but it’s recommended to flag low-quality posts.
The point is the limit is in place to prevent lower-quality short replies. It is not hard to bloat your post but still making it look meaningful.
They can still bypass it easily, so what’s the point?
The point is to give a more quality and rich response rather than quick and short replies which do not impose as any additional information to any topic.
You have to understand something technical about formatting to make that work. It deters people who don’t have a clue what they’re doing. If you know how to do the format hack I assume you can form a coherent post of 30+ characters too, so at that point it doesn’t really matter (your posts are likely to be not spam at that point).
Still, some users will probably reply “k” if the limit was removed.
I 100% agree. Dm’s are more casual(in a way) and doesn’t require as much formality as a topic or post so I’m not sure why you would have a character count.
And what prevents you from writing
Thank you!
Exactly 10 characters. You can also leave a like instead.