Your views on short posts?

[Fergal]

Posts like "Thank you" or "Great post" can be annoying on a forum. They often do little to stimulate discussion and are often made by a member to promote their sig link or increase their post count.

However, short posts can sometimes be useful and good for the community.

My question is how do you deal with short posts, e.g. do you require posts to be more than one sentence long?

How do you differentiate between a helpful short post and a spammy short post?

 

[Moneyman]

Short posts? It completely depends.
Short posts such as "Thank you", "Great post", like you stated, is a great way to inflate the post count but also reduce the quality of the posts.

In the contrary, if a post is short, but gives out all the information needed such as an answer, I'd have no problem with it.

 

[Gizmo]

I'm lenient on this at Chatable. But only if it happens in the odd occasion. I would be more strict if I ran a different genre board but Chatable is a general discussion forum so I am more rule relaxed about it than usual.

 

[vividlion]

If I come across a short post which is in reply to a discussion that has an open end, such as "thank you" I think a great suggestion would be to ask "what did you find about what I said to be thankful for?" ask some probing questions to stimulate more conversation.

 

[Medora]

Fergal—

Hi.

Please correct if I misunderstand, but it seems hinted you do not necessarily see "short" posts as problematic per se, but the mindset or motivation of the members who post them, which in this case refers to intent to advertise, obtain services, etc—i.e., reasons which may have nothing to do with the people they are replying to, or anyone reading their replies.

Moreover, you have a very specific user base in mind, one often found at promotion forums: marketers and website managers, specifically the subset that does not necessarily care one iota about participation in other communities for its own sake.

If this interpretation is correct, perhaps you envisioned a scenario where a series of "short" posts may potentially be even more constructive than a single "long" post, in the sense that the two or more members giving the back and forth short posts are engaged in genuine back and forth for its own sake, taking yet another opportunity within the community to form or strengthen a bond.

If yes, I lean towards this view.

To add: I can appreciate someone wanting to add a "short" reply to give thanks or a compliment, which is one reason I am fond of the "like" feature, especially the "extended" version for xenForo that allows members to choose whether a post was informative, funny, etc, without having to submit a reply.

That said, since the overwhelming majority of my members do not have anything to advertise, I am not concerned with the means with which people try to use the forum as a billboard with the least "actual" participation possible.

 

[Geoffrey]

I don't really care too much about short posts, as long as the post is on topic in some way. If everyone starts making similarly short posts and it gets unnecessary, I'd probably lock the topic (have done this on announcements before). Only time I care about post length is if I'm paying for the posts, via forum cash or other methods. If your job is to post on the forum, you need to put in effort in my opinion. I don't think that's too much to ask for in that case.

 

[Migi]

Short is relative. One-liner posts can also be considered short. Like what everyone says above it depends on the content and occasion. As long as it's still on topic and actually helpful or brings members to reply to the post (and thus encouraging discussion), it may stay.

I tend to encourage the usage of reputation/like/thanks system if I have forums to avoid unnecessary thank-you posts. There's always an exception, though.

 

[Hishy]

In my opinion, it depends on the popularity of the forum. A larger forum I was on had a three-word-post rule, where you had to do more than three words or risk a warning. Lower in popularity forums may not mind short posts as it simply adds on to their activity!

 

[PurpleGemini]

As long as it's not "Bump" or something like "LOL", then I'm fine with it.

 

[VirusZero]

I'm not entirely against shorter posts (like I mentioned here), but they should be used fairly rarely/sparingly because there often isn't much reason/point to only posting "Thanks" or "Cool find". They don't really add anything to the discussion and most people tend to skip over them. Sure they show activity, but it's pretty low quality activity. And if you saw a bunch of topics where people were only posting like 2-4 words, would you really want to stick around?
(I know I wouldn't, I would be inclined to think there wasn't actually much discussion going on so I'd go somewhere else. )

So in a lot of cases, I think if a forum has a like/reputation system then it'd be better to use them rather than just posting "thanks" or "cool find". But on forums that don't have those sorts of systems then I suppose it'd be ok once in a while (provided most of the time you are posting much higher quality posts).

Though people on post exchanges? Make a real effort to match the quality of the person you're doing an exchange with. Don't post loads of really short replies on their forum if they're giving you decent length quality replies/topics. Doing that just makes people less likely to do exchanges with you in the future.

And people doing post packages (using either real money or forum points)... People are paying to have posts done. So posting messages like "Cool find" or "thanks for sharing" is rather pathetic. (It's poor quality workmanship and reflects terribly on yourself and the site you're staff on.) On a personal note, seeing posts like that from packagers just makes me not want to get packages from that site since I feel like it'd be a waste (like I'd be paying for spam).

 

[Kaynil]

I don't really make much of a fuzz about them. If they are on topic I let them be. If the post becomes a series of short posts conversation that seem out in comparison to the rest of the thread I separate them and merge them to the say something random or small chit chat sticky threads. I rarely delete posts unless they are plain garbage or advertising. I only PM to explain the user if most of their posts are this way and I have no reasons to believe they are deliberately misbehaving (like being old members well familiar with the netiquette for a friendly explanation.

Exchanges, packages I always try to make quality posts, expanding myself and choosing topics that have discussion potential as much as possible. I am not used to be extremely short. I always tend to feel odd if I only post one line. Unless that's the norm and my longer posts stick out, then I just feel weird, hahah.

 

[Fergal]

Thanks everyone for your replies, there is some very helpful feedback there. It has changed my view a little on the value of short posts and given me a lot to think about for our post policies at Business Advice Forum.

 

[David]

I don't feel there's anything wrong with it.

Even if upping the post count is their intention, a one liner doesn't suddenly lower the quality of the forum, and not every response can be a 2 words, otherwise, there's not much of a discussion/forum.

A forum is a place for discussion, and in everyday discussion, people do respond with one lines or 2 words. It shouldn't be any different based on the medium for discussion.

 

[MSocialH]

Well usually a short post like thank you or great article are considered a spam comment at my blog and never approved (expect if it comes from a regular reader), those are only for the sake of the backlink.

 

[Ashley]

It's always depended on the topic for me. If it's something that doesn't require anything more than a yes or no answer, then I'm OK with a person just saying "yes" or "No" and being done with it. However, if it's something that'll require a bit more explanation, I'll probably (politely of course) say something along the lines of, "Can you provide more details please? I don't understand what you mean" or something to that extent. Like most things on forums, it seriously depends on the situation at hand.

 

[Kirk93]

Well, my forum's a chat forum with a lot of teenagers, so I expect small posts like "LOL" on occasion. Fortunately most of my members don't seem to do that.

If it's a posting service, I simply don't pay them for the job as it's half-assed and a waste of time.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Posts like "Thank you" or "Great post" can be annoying on a forum. They often do little to stimulate discussion and are often made by a member to promote their sig link or increase their post count.

However, short posts can sometimes be useful and good for the community.

My question is how do you deal with short posts, e.g. do you require posts to be more than one sentence long?

How do you differentiate between a helpful short post and a spammy short post?

Short and one liner posts are often annoying to the forum administrator who has read all about the importance on content development, quality details within the content and so on. However, some forum owners forget to understand that not all of their users are also reading into content development and forum SEO. So when they create their short "thank you" post, they have no content goal in their thoughts.

I personally don't allow myself to be bothered by short one liner responses (unless its spam or abuse of course) because I am happy the member is saying something, even if its not much at all. 🙂

They don't have a lot to say but they are still saying something, aren't they? Its something to look at when dealing with one liner responses. 🙂

 

[Fergal]

Thanks for sharing your opinion Shawn. Sometimes I see posts that are short and I think "that contributes nothing to the discussion, the member is only posting to increase post count or get a sig link". Do you ever feel that way?