I think certain categories should be limited in the number of characters/words they can contain, and some should also have a minimum number of acceptable characters/words. I believe I brought this up in another thread, but I think it deserves its own.

Here are a few reasons:

1) People sometimes submit the same thing for a thread title and a thread post/reply. This typically would not happen in a real forum, and would seem a bit strange. This results in titles being longer than they should be, and/or posts/replies being shorter than they should be.

2) There are few acceptable short replies/posts. Very rarely can a good reply or post be made from less than a single line or sentence, and in most cases they will not contain any randomizers, which will get them downvoted quite a bit anyway.

3) Long thread titles are too descriptive and/or long. The thread titles for this game are meant to be one-liners that catch the eye quickly and sound bizarre/funny. I’ve seen too many titles that are multiple lines long or are too complicated to bother reading.

4) Really long enemy names and thread titles can screw up the way the style displays. Long enemy names often lead to the by_whom column of the replies being grossly stretched out and making the thread look weird. Long thread titles can also make the styles display strangely.

I’m not saying that usernames should be 10 characters or less, or anything, but 45 is a bit much. Between 1 and 20 or 25 characters would be pretty generous. For titles, between 1 and 80 characters would probably be a decent amount. For posts/replies, there should be a minimum of about 16 characters or two words, and a maximum of something a lot higher, like 500-750 characters.

Randomly generated words should be valued at about 8 characters long.

What do you guys think?

P.S.:

In case you were wondering, seeing “The Glorious Duck of Correct Apostrophe Usage” posted as an enemy name (a winning one, at that) prompted me to bring up this suggestion again, and entries like:

“bumistance Required: My son is a @insult_shakespearean , the @insult_shakespearean thinks gymnophobia is a fear of dodgeball and that elephantitis is a rare form of lycanthropy. Should I simply give him the back of my hand or should I just wall the @insult_shakespearean up in an old coke furnace along with my dissident day-laborers”

being posted as THREAD TITLES.

Note that I am not commenting on the humor or validity of either entry based on content, but on length. I haven’t even read the thread title at the time of my posting this. In general, the posts/replies are of decent length, and the thread titles are the worst offenders.

Yeah, I’d agree. Some people try to replace quality with a long submission, while others try the shot-gun approach with short entries. This could definitely help to ensure quality, because it makes people give an extra thought to what they’re submitting.

Corion Posted:

I think certain categories should be limited in the number of characters/words they can contain, and some should also have a minimum number of acceptable characters/words. I believe I brought this up in another thread, but I think it deserves its own.

Here are a few reasons:

1) People sometimes submit the same thing for a thread title and a thread post/reply. This typically would not happen in a real forum, and would seem a bit strange. This results in titles being longer than they should be, and/or posts/replies being shorter than they should be.

2) There are few acceptable short replies/posts. Very rarely can a good reply or post be made from less than a single line or sentence, and in most cases they will not contain any randomizers, which will get them downvoted quite a bit anyway.

3) Long thread titles are too descriptive and/or long. The thread titles for this game are meant to be one-liners that catch the eye quickly and sound bizarre/funny. I’ve seen too many titles that are multiple lines long or are too complicated to bother reading.

4) Really long enemy names and thread titles can screw up the way the style displays. Long enemy names often lead to the by_whom column of the replies being grossly stretched out and making the thread look weird. Long thread titles can also make the styles display strangely.

I’m not saying that usernames should be 10 characters or less, or anything, but 45 is a bit much. Between 1 and 20 or 25 characters would be pretty generous. For titles, between 1 and 80 characters would probably be a decent amount. For posts/replies, there should be a minimum of about 16 characters or two words, and a maximum of something a lot higher, like 500-750 characters.

Randomly generated words should be valued at about 8 characters long.

What do you guys think?

P.S.:

In case you were wondering, seeing “The Glorious Duck of Correct Apostrophe Usage” posted as an enemy name (a winning one, at that) prompted me to bring up this suggestion again, and entries like:

“bumistance Required: My son is a @insult_shakespearean , the @insult_shakespearean thinks gymnophobia is a fear of dodgeball and that elephantitis is a rare form of lycanthropy. Should I simply give him the back of my hand or should I just wall the @insult_shakespearean up in an old coke furnace along with my dissident day-laborers”

being posted as THREAD TITLES.

Note that I am not commenting on the humor or validity of either entry based on content, but on length. I haven’t even read the thread title at the time of my posting this. In general, the posts/replies are of decent length, and the thread titles are the worst offenders.

Sorry if I necro-posted, but I had to get this off my chest.

WTF is up with the 5 line paragraphs for thread titles? Have any of these submitters actually been on a forum? And they’re actually getting lots of votes. Thread titles this long should be a no brain, no read, automatic thumbs down. Take it to typical posts.

Also, avatars are not INCIT.

Carry on