38 posts tagged with length.
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How long is too long? - comments edition

Long comments can be difficult for some users to read, navigate, manage. At what point does a comment get to be unwieldy for those reading it? [more inside]
posted by kristi on Jan 14, 2022 - 62 comments

How long is too long?

While catching up with the latest politics megathread, I was surprised to see this mod note from LobsterMitten: [Note about post drafts - putting here so people will see it, but happy to talk it over more in email, will email some of the recent posters. Please keep the posts on the shorter side, maybe 1000 words or that neighborhood. Thanks.] As a longtime crafter of megaposts, I don't think I've ever seen official mod guidance to cut them (relatively) short in this way. Posts have been edited for leaving too much above the fold, but I can think of only a handful of incidents where the post body itself got official pushback for being Too Long -- and those largely involved novella-sized posts with length-induced display errors (really) or blanket copy-pasting a website's contents. Is LobsterMitten's advice targeted at the political megathreads only -- perhaps for performance reasons -- or should it be construed more broadly? I happen to think a well-organized megapost is the best of MeFi and a feature few vid- and listicle-driven sites can match, and in the case of the politics threads specifically they're a fine example of community collaboration that provide a valuable curated record of this chaotic era. But what do you think?
posted by Rhaomi on Apr 17, 2019 - 49 comments

A whale of a Meta!

Halloween Jack posed a question in response to aniola's wonderful post about whales and literature.
“So, can any of you boffins on the blue tell me if there's a longer post than this one?”
I thought it'd be nice to have a place to discuss that subject and share some of the longer posts that have managed to hit MetaFilter.
posted by Fizz on Jan 15, 2018 - 25 comments

We're adding a soft warning for long above-the-fold text on the blue

We’re adding a heads-up note to the posting process on the front page when previewing a long-above-the-fold post, to help provide folks with preemptive feedback about post length. It’s not enforced—your post won’t be truncated by the posting process or anything like that—but we’re hoping it’ll help folks think about how they’re framing stuff in terms of how much vertical space it might occupy. [more inside]
posted by cortex on Jul 15, 2015 - 60 comments

Length limit for MeFi posts?

I wanted to ask MeFites and the mods if there is any interest in having some sort of length limit for MetaFilter posts. [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Mar 14, 2015 - 63 comments

That's a lot of words.

What is the longest metafilter comment that wasn't a stunt post?
posted by empath on May 7, 2012 - 51 comments

At least we're not down to 140 characters

Has the maximum length for comments been shortened some time in the past six months or so? I see more and more comments getting cut off that seem long-ish but hardly Treaty-of-Westphalia long. Perhaps there was a discussion about this and I missed it. I hate to request ponies, but perhaps a "characters remaining" count for the text-entry field or a warning on hitting Post would help alleviate the problem.
posted by adamrice on Dec 10, 2011 - 62 comments

Fighty gladiator thunderdome

This FPP's typical and relatively successful feminism discussion devolved into a mano a mano between DNye and myself. I admittedly took his bait and engaged; my bad. This led to DNye's epic 3,600 word comment (plus addendum and corrections). I'm trying to disengage in that topic 1 2 as I try to avoid pissing matches these days. He wants to keep on fightin' 1 2 so I'm asking him to bring it here. [more inside]
posted by msalt on Jun 15, 2010 - 211 comments

I need [more inside] and less outside.

Can limit the main text area so that people are encouraged to put [more inside] rather than so much outside? [more inside]
posted by tmcw on Mar 22, 2010 - 67 comments

Extra-long words for an extra-wide screen

When a title (or possible any word) in a contact's post is long enough, it overflows the bounds of the sidebar and causes the front page to have right-scroll. Pic here.
posted by ChrisR on Aug 10, 2008 - 23 comments

Word count ſhmörd cøunt!

Average word count for anonymous queſtions vs average word count for inanonymous queſtions. [more inside]
posted by oxford blue on Jan 27, 2008 - 20 comments

What was the longest thread about, anyway?

Seeing this recent MeTa thread at 378 comments made me wonder what the longest pan-MetaFilter thread was. I came up with this from August 24, 2001 at a whopping 1729 comments (apparently some kind of record), but they're context-less (for me, at least) because the link to the "metafilter parody" that the post refers to is gone. Can anyone slake my thirst for MetaFilter history and supply the parody that inspired such prolific commenting?
posted by scblackman on Nov 17, 2007 - 37 comments

Brevity is the soul of. . . what again?

Flagging a post as "too long."
posted by bardic on Jun 16, 2007 - 58 comments

Because some people won't put [more inside]

Pony request... could there please be a character limit for the "summary" box? I mean, wow.
posted by Many bubbles on May 16, 2007 - 20 comments

Long comments truncated

Long comments still being chopped in My Recent Comments, not at a break or a tag. Older threads about this issue contain fixes. Little help?
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur on May 10, 2007 - 24 comments

Length limits in AskMe

"More Inside" is great and all, but perhaps it's time for absolute length limits in AskMe? Brain-dump essays like those (2600 and 1500 words!) don't help people answer, and all those posts need is some judicious editing before posting.
posted by mendel on May 9, 2007 - 42 comments

It's so big!

Ridiculously long Headline/Titles result in ridiculously long "add to favorites" pop-ups. See here.
posted by phaedon on Apr 6, 2007 - 11 comments

Comment length hard limit?

(Minor issue, but) is there a character limit on comments?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken on Apr 2, 2007 - 59 comments

title tags

How can I get y2karl's informative pop up title tags to fit my browser window consistently? On the current post the prospect magazine snippet is an almost square box - which fits fine - and the NYT snippet is so wide that I cannot read it all.
posted by dash_slot- on Mar 10, 2007 - 22 comments

This huge thread kills Safari/OmniWeb

This huge thread kills Safari/OmniWeb. I'd like there to be a preference that allows me to see massive posts broken up by 100s of comments or something. Alternatively, is there a different CSS file that can be loaded for these that will keep Safari/OmniWeb from crashing?
posted by onalark on Nov 6, 2006 - 17 comments

character limit on tags?

What's the character limit on tags? I tried to add the tag 'BuffalobuffaloBuffalobuffalobuffalobuffaloBuffalobuffalo' to this thread and got instead:
Error Executing Database Query. [Macromedia][SQLServer JDBC Driver][SQLServer]String or binary data would be truncated. Saw nothing about it in the FAQ.

posted by ChasFile on Sep 29, 2006 - 32 comments

pony that automatically shoves extremely long FPPs into a queue

Could we have a pony that automatically shoves extremely long FPPs into a queue for administrative approval?
posted by I Love Tacos on Apr 26, 2006 - 28 comments

Character limit on AskMe front page

How about a character limit on the first part of an AskMe question? I'm tired of seeing the AskMe page cluttered with questions like this one.
posted by mr.dan on Feb 4, 2006 - 16 comments

format impedes discussion

Interesting post (maybe) - hoist by it's own petard.
Initial comments ignore the substance - format impedes discussion.

Administrators - PHM!
posted by dash_slot- on Oct 15, 2005 - 19 comments

new posters big posts

ericbop, RockCorpse, you guys are both new but three paragraphs (389 words) / five paragraphs is a little large for a post.
posted by Mitheral on May 27, 2005 - 33 comments

Small text doesn't mitigate excessive length

Small text doesn't mitigate excessive length, karl. It exacerbates it, by making ALL THAT harder to read. What? Are you trying to make less work for those of us who will scroll past it? If you want to be read, leave your Iraq links + editorializing legible and stop pretending they don't take up as much space as they do.
posted by scarabic on Sep 21, 2004 - 45 comments

NewsFilter posts could be shorter

In an effort to reach a compromise between people who like newsfilter posts and people who simply can't abide by them, do you think we can attempt to economize the length of FPPs such as this one?
posted by sic on Sep 13, 2004 - 43 comments

Pagination of comments

Would it make sense to spread the comments on user pages over multiple pages in batches of 100 or 200 comments per page? Right now loading a page listing the user's comments in MeFi or MeTa takes a while to load if there are tonnes of comments to list.
posted by riffola on Jan 23, 2004 - 10 comments

So the blogstop thread is still going strong.

So the blogstop thread is still going strong. Somebody who's been here longer than me...has something like this happened before? This could be a precedent.

So, is it possible to create another precedent? Namely...posting another FPP, specifically so that people have somewhere new to go to comment, instead of trying to comment in the extant thread?

Surely this place is a FILTER and not a discussion board, but seeing how so many of us are still fooling around on that thread, I thought it'd be nice to have it "refreshed", so to speak.
posted by taumeson on Aug 4, 2003 - 46 comments

Mouseover Madness, Or, The Terrible Title.

Mouseover Madness, Or, The Terrible Title.

I applaud the use of the title attribute, but here the text is so long there isn't time to read it before the browser hides it again.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen on Apr 21, 2003 - 24 comments

Big FPP's can be annoying. Anyone else agree?

Big FPP's can be annoying. Anyone else agree?

Is there any chance of getting a 'maximum length of a front-page post' limit implemented? Or at least have a suggestion to the poster that their post is a little long?
posted by cheaily on Jul 25, 2002 - 25 comments

long FPPs still happen

Vertical space at a premium, yet long FPPs still happen. How about a count on the characters in the textarea (server side probably better) and a warning like "Are you really sure all this text needs to be on the front page? Have you considered the [more inside] technique?"
posted by sylloge on Dec 5, 2001 - 17 comments

I absolutely adore long front page posts

For the record, I absolutely adore long front page posts that are three paragraphs long with more links than I'm ever gonna get around to clicking on. I just wanted to say that before some MeFi cop came in here reading the riot act. =) I cite this as an example of when it's okay to do that. Who's with me?
posted by ZachsMind on Dec 3, 2001 - 22 comments

Hey, what's going here?

Hey, what's going here? I read a very long fpp, with a comment inside saying it was too long. Now the comment has been axed, the post stays and two more very long fpps are there....
is something amiss?
posted by thekorruptor on Nov 28, 2001 - 2 comments

the law of decreasing comment length

the law of decreasing comment length: as a thread ceases to be a potentially useful resource for information and argument, its average comment length approaches 0 asymptotically. (such as here, here, and here.) other patterns are out there, i'm sure. (how about "giant comment punctuates end or near end of further commentary"?)
posted by moz on Nov 12, 2001 - 31 comments

Character limit in link description box

Character limit in link description box. 940 is too many; 525 is too much for my eye, but any less may be too constraining.
posted by raaka on Sep 5, 2001 - 6 comments

Is it time for a word limit for posts to the home page?

How long is too long? Is it time for a word limit for posts to the home page?
posted by jjg on May 29, 2001 - 18 comments

WTF


This comment in the longest thread ever seems a bit inappropriate. WTF?
posted by norm on Mar 30, 2001 - 4 comments

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