Not in so many words May 19, 2014 6:37 AM   Subscribe

Pony request for a hard word limit on what shows up over the fold of new posts.

The new post/new question interface is divided in three parts (title, copy/question and extended explanation). On the blue and green there is a small text above the copy/question box asking posters to keep it to one paragraph and use the extended explanation area for additional details that show up as "more inside". Unfortunately, people seem to overlook this.

As it stands now, the main box does not have any word limit (I stopped counting at 43K words!). And it happens several times a day that people post all their text in this first box, resulting in overly long ask.mes of several hundred words. Since I work on a small 10 inch screen, their question is all that shows up. With the popularity of tablets this probably affects countless Mefites. Obviously, I flag those questions as display error (my main reason for flagging) and usually a nice mod fixes it within a few minutes. With a hard word limit though, this could be avoided. A range of 50 or 60 words should be adequate to write an intro, at least on the green. And even on the blue, that range allows for a lot of interesting content.

I think a hard word limit would not inconvenience the poster, at most it might take them a minute or two longer to decide how to split up/structure their text. But it would be beneficial for the community (no need for flagging, less work for mods). Thoughts?
posted by travelwithcats to Feature Requests at 6:37 AM (32 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

i personally like that this sort of thing is handled on a case by case basis. if the mods don't find it too much of a bother to edit it when it happens, i'd prefer things stay the way they are.
posted by nadawi at 6:41 AM on May 19, 2014 [6 favorites]


travelwithcats: "I think a hard word limit would not inconvenience the poster, at most it might take them a minute or two longer to decide how to split up/structure their text. But it would be beneficial for the community (no need for flagging, less work for mods). Thoughts? "

As a wordy bastard who likes long, complicated posts, I hate the idea of hard-coding this. I'm with nadawi in preferring that this remain on a case-by-case basis.
posted by zarq at 7:01 AM on May 19, 2014


"More inside" can be long and complicated, while over the fold can be succinct. The word limit would affect only the part that shows up on the site, not what follows within once you've clicked. The mods cut long ask.mes anyway, often to less than 50 words. Long ask.mes just clutter up the site.
posted by travelwithcats at 7:09 AM on May 19, 2014


Scanning down the AskMe page very briefly, it looks like this post has the largest "above the fold" amount of text (169 words/915 characters). Given you can expound on the details all you want in the More Inside, I really don't see how you need any more than that on the front page for an AskMe post. 50/60 words might be a bit low. Maybe 1,500 characters would be enough.

Not sure I have an opinion on character limits on the blue.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 7:09 AM on May 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


And even on the blue, that range allows for a lot of interesting content.

For reference, today's George Soros post is 56 words; the Alistair Mcleod post below it is 66 words, the Wild Child post is 85 words and the Glen Larson TV post is 77 words.

To me, all of those seem a fine length on the front page, and while most posts already appear to fall under 50-60 words, I think the front page is a much more interesting read with a variety of styles and lengths of posts. A hard limit would interfere with many interesting styles of posting and/or posts on complex topics, and would make the front page itself more dull and Buzzfeed-like.
posted by mediareport at 7:09 AM on May 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


As a wordy bastard who likes long, complicated posts, I hate the idea of hard-coding this

To be fair, we're only talking about above-the-fold text, nothing about the extended area where you do most all of your long, complicated postings. And that kind of wall-of-text on the homepage is a pain to deal with, as we're tasked with trying to figure out a way to edit someone's question on the fly after it starts racking up insta-flags.

This is not a bad idea, but it would likely not be something hard-coded that would block you from completing a post until the front page text was shorter, most likely we'd have to figure out a way to count words (and ignore HTML, which would add thousands of characters to even short above-the-fold posts) and throw up a warning if it seems like you're trying to post the Treaty of Westphalia to the front page.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:10 AM on May 19, 2014


Mods, would you please weigh in how often this is an issue for you? And how much of a pain it is to keep after?
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:11 AM on May 19, 2014


I think the front page is a much more interesting read with a variety of styles and lengths of posts

We're comparing apples and oranges a bit here, the problem crops up most often specifically on the Ask MetaFilter front page, not the main MeFi site.

it looks like this post has the largest "above the fold" amount of text

Ironically, that was edited by a mod because the original post had no text more inside (probably what prompted this post)

how often this is an issue for you? And how much of a pain it is to keep after?

Other mods can weigh in, but it happens often enough (maybe once a day, not several if I had to guess) that it is annoying, and asking people to edit stuff down beforehand instead of having to force an edit on their question after it goes up is greatly preferred.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:13 AM on May 19, 2014


Totally agree with this post - there SHOULD be a hard word limit. Some of the words you people use are really, really hard - and I, for one, do not have the time to run to the dictionary every time you throw a "heuristic" or a "hermeneutic" or - worse, a goddam "stochastic" - into your relationship questions.

If I had my way, anyone caught using a hard or difficult word on this website would have their vibrissae deracinated and their glabella sparged with mucorrhoea by my tatterdemalion myrmidons until they PULE like a caitiff.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 7:24 AM on May 19, 2014 [30 favorites]


Mods, would you please weigh in how often this is an issue for you? And how much of a pain it is to keep after?

It comes up regularly on Ask, though it's not a ton—my guess is several times a week? So not an onerous burden to handle manually.

That said, there's posts that are way, way too long and have to be cut down, and there's posts that aren't auto-edits but are sort of pushing it. I feel like if we wanted to do some automation on this it could be approaching both: a hard word limit to prevent the less common gigantic posts out of misuse of the posting form, and a soft guidance type thing that suggests at maybe 100 words or so that putting some (or some more) inside might keep the question more scannable from the front page.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:28 AM on May 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


it just seems to me that the case by case basis is one of the things that reinforces that metafilter is modded by people and that there are very few hard and fast rules. it's not about this specific issue, but more about the overall site culture. if the mods find it annoying though, i'm all for them changing it to something that works better for them.
posted by nadawi at 7:32 AM on May 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'd say I routinely flag askme posts where the entire post is one long paragraph above the fold. As for blue posts, I don't recall that ever really being an issue..
posted by k5.user at 7:32 AM on May 19, 2014


I vote for the "soft guidance" idea -- the majority of huge AskMes seem to be from (relative) newbies who might just not have an idea of why we have [more inside].
posted by Etrigan at 7:33 AM on May 19, 2014


mathowie: "most likely we'd have to figure out a way to count words (and ignore HTML, which would add thousands of characters to even short above-the-fold posts) and throw up a warning if it seems like you're trying to post the Treaty of Westphalia to the front page."

Thereby implying that the Treaty of Westphalia would be okay using more inside....

...I'll be right back.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:35 AM on May 19, 2014 [3 favorites]


Dear AskMe

My partner claims that his rigid adherence to Strong's Concordance for its largely stochastic definitions is a valid heuristic for generating advice for life, as it displays zero respect for either authorial intent or contemporary context, while I am certain that it is an invalid hermeneutic position for the same reasons, which one of us is an asshole?
posted by Blasdelb at 7:37 AM on May 19, 2014 [7 favorites]


"who might just not have an idea of why we have [more inside]."

Not exactly, there is this text: "[...] try to ask your entire question while keeping it to a paragraph. (If you must go on longer, use the optional extended area.)"
And people still post away.

"I'd say I routinely flag askme posts where the entire post is one long paragraph above the fold. As for blue posts, I don't recall that ever really being an issue.."

Maybe there could be different limits for the green and the blue?
posted by travelwithcats at 7:38 AM on May 19, 2014


it just seems to me that the case by case basis is one of the things that reinforces that metafilter is modded by people and that there are very few hard and fast rules.

I agree with you, for sure; but with the very-long-pile-of-text thing that inspired this I want to be clear that it's not something that falls into that case-by-case rubric.

There are zero cases where putting 500 words on the front page of Ask Metafilter will result in anything other than us quickly and by fiat editing most of it below the fold; the only moderator judgement involved at that point is where to place the cut, and it'd actually be a much better situation all around if that edit decision were to be made by the asker before the question went live, as it's sometimes kind of a crappy set of "where to cut" options we have to work with when the post wasn't structured with a cut in mind.

The soft-guidance thing I'm chewing on would be just that—a general, non-enforced suggestion based on a really common use-case addressing something we've seen for a long time as a more minor but tricky-to-educate-on issue.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:38 AM on May 19, 2014


Maybe there could be different limits for the green and the blue?

This is so much less frequently an actual issue on the blue that I don't feel like there's a good approach to automating the more edge-case nature there. It's okay for posts to be a bit longer there and there's a lot more allowance for style. We manually trim very long posts when they come along but it's much, much less common and generalizable a case than with Ask.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:41 AM on May 19, 2014


The soft-guidance thing I'm chewing on would be just that—a general, non-enforced suggestion based on a really common use-case addressing something we've seen for a long time as a more minor but tricky-to-educate-on issue.

You're going to put Clippy on AskMe, aren't you. "Hi! It looks like you're trying to jack up the main page of askme with this poorly edited wall of text question. You sure?"
posted by cashman at 7:42 AM on May 19, 2014 [4 favorites]


oh yeah, cortex - i'm totally with you. i was just explaining why i was against the hard coded suggestion in concept, but that if it ends up at hard coded or soft guidance or staying the same, i'm on board with whatever the mods want to do.
posted by nadawi at 7:48 AM on May 19, 2014


cashman: " You're going to put Clippy on AskMe, aren't you. "Hi! It looks like you're trying to jack up the main page of askme with this poorly edited wall of text question. You sure?""

*cough*

I'd love to have the html checker say where the friggin' broken link can be found.

"You appear to have a broken link. Good luck finding it. Sucker."
"WHAT?! There are 86 links in the post! Can you give me a freakin' hint?"
posted by zarq at 7:52 AM on May 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


zarq, if you don't already use it, notepad++ is awesome for this.
posted by nadawi at 7:58 AM on May 19, 2014


Or, just post 86 separate posts with one link each. That should prove popular.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:11 AM on May 19, 2014 [2 favorites]


mathowie: " To be fair, we're only talking about above-the-fold text, nothing about the extended area where you do most all of your long, complicated postings. And that kind of wall-of-text on the homepage is a pain to deal with, as we're tasked with trying to figure out a way to edit someone's question on the fly after it starts racking up insta-flags."

*nod* I was thinking more along the lines of posts like this one. It's 136 words. It could definitely be further tightened by a few words, but If I were to try to fit the above-the-fold part of the post into say, 75 words, that would completely change its presentation.

Also, (and I realize that this should not be something that you should be worrying about) but in some cases forced brevity can be a lot more time consuming. Now that there's a character limit for titles, I find I spend a lot more time trying to find ways to fill that field that don't exceed the limit.

That said, I completely acknowledge that this is my issue, with my posting style.
posted by zarq at 8:12 AM on May 19, 2014


nadawi: "zarq, if you don't already use it, notepad++ is awesome for this."

Oooh. Thanks! Will take a look.
posted by zarq at 8:12 AM on May 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


zarq, also keep in mind we're talking mainly about Ask MeFi here, and 136 word limits would likely be ok anyway on Ask MeFi.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:20 AM on May 19, 2014


Ok! :)
posted by zarq at 8:26 AM on May 19, 2014


throw up a warning if it seems like you're trying to post the Treaty of Westphalia to the front page.

STOP PREEMPTING MY STUNT POSTS
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:02 AM on May 19, 2014


I would pay to have MetaFilter donut show up and offer to help me with my posts.
posted by arcticseal at 9:22 AM on May 19, 2014


"Your post could use a little powdered sugar. And frosting. Everybody loves frosting."
posted by zarq at 8:40 PM on May 19, 2014


A soft limit doesn't seem like it would have any drawbacks (besides I suppose not "working" as well as a hard limit).

I would like to posit though that we have the opposite problem as well where people condense their question down so far that it becomes unanswerably generic without the more inside. EG: "What is the the name of this book" degrading into pure nonsensicalness when the not shown to everyone title forms half the question. So I'm not sure even a soft limit is a net win unless that limit if very generous if the soft limit encourages excessive brevity.
posted by Mitheral at 11:42 PM on May 19, 2014


Definitely we'd be aiming for nudging in the top 5-10% outlier territory, yeah, not anything along the lines of "do you really need an entire sentence?"

We were running some numbers yesterday to see how the historical population of questions break down in terms of above-the-fold text, and it's interesting if not super surprising I guess to how much of a falloff there really is once you get past about fifty words. Still plenty of questions that hit 80, but it's a serious minority; 100 even less so; past 150 it's getting downright sliver-thin. (One, from way back in the day before flags or more inside, stands at 463 words. Heh.)

We'd probably look at nudging somewhere around 100; eyeballing questions, that's around where they start feeling a little conspicuously big to me, not necessarily something I'll take action on but something that I start seriously thinking about it at least. But if we do this we'll definitely be approaching it as a try-and-see thing and listen to feedback from folks on how it ends up feeling in practice.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:10 AM on May 20, 2014


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