As you know, many boards have very severe problem with posting quality. Dumping images, single-sentence statements of opinion ("I love my waifu", "your taste is shit") have become ubiquitous through many boards, and the Sage feature has become nearly irrelevant. It's a big enough problem that, at present, it most likely isn't practical for users, janitors, or moderators to address every individual shitpost on a case-by-case basis.
For that reason, I'd like the Hiro, /qa/, and the Mod team to consider the idea of implementing an automatic sage (and possibly other features) that functions based on post length. Particularly for /a/, but I imagine it could do on a lot of other boards or possibly even globally as well. It is no exaggeration to say that the vast majority of low-quality posts on this site are very short in length.
A very simple example would be to have every post under 50 (possibly even 25) characters in length automatically be considered a sage. This would address one of the biggest issues on the board, which is that the lowest effort posts are the best at bumping threads. By implementing this system you would immediately help wipe low-quality posts off the board by removing their ability to bump, thereby reducing their visibility on the board, increasing the chance that it falls off the board, and of course blocking the low-quality responses they attract from bumping as well. Anyone who goes out of their way to sidestep thes system (IE copypasta or letterspam) would become very easy targets for reporting and easy for mods to ban without a second glance.
(cont)
There is a direct relationship between post's length and its visible quality. The longer a post is, the easier it is to recognize whether it's a shitpost (or spam), and the shorter a post is the less likely it's of to be of any worth to the board whatsoever. Someone who can't support their opinion with anything worthwhile will be less able to write a lengthy post without filling it with obvious tells or flaws, making it easier for people to disregard, refute, or report them. Longer posts inherently take more effort to write, making people more likely to put thought into them, and less likely to post on impulse.
Such a system should be very beneficial for discussion quality on boards that implement it, and at the time should be very unobtrusive to actual posting due to having placing no post limitations whatsoever.
>>429412
What in the hell could possibly be wrong with an image dump thread?
This is still an imageboard you know.
>>429433
Generals were originally banned specifically because they were nothing but image dumping.
They're also usually fast enough to hit the image limit without needing to be constantly bumped to the first page in the process.
If you believe that every board is meant to house image dumps then why does the image limit exist? My suggestion wouldn't ban them anyway, it would just stop people from bumping them to the front page.
Interesting idea. I wonder what /v/ and /vg/ would look like with this implemented?
>>429441
What about pretty much every porn board?
>>429903
Do you mean the actual porn boards or NSFW board in general? The dedicated porn boards (and any other image dump boards) could obviously do without it because they're almost exclusively used for dumping anyway.
So implementing something like that globally was certainly an exaggeration, the main point I was getting at is that it's something that could be implemented to different degrees for each board depending on the desired standard for that board, and since it isn't a true filter it shouldn't negatively impact posters if used responsibly.
this would be good for the porn boards if image posting was excluded.
for the other boards, i think it'd just lead to longer shitposts after a couple of days and everyone discovered how it worked.
>>429412
>>429416
This wouldn't solve the intentional bumping since every 'bump' would just become a lorem ipsum-like copypasta that's general enough to apply to the thread, making it difficult for mods to distinguish it.
But on the whole I think that's worth the idea of short posts (which aren't just shitposts) not bumping threads for some boards. This would only be particularly useful on the top fifteen or so bards to slow down the first page/catalog. The rest of the boards (which includes every porn board other than /trash/) are too slow as it is to really benefit from a further slow down.
Aside from the straight bumps getting more annoying, the only other harm I could see is with storytime threads. But that just means they need a straight bump every now and again.
>>429441
>Generals were originally banned specifically because they were nothing but image dumping.
Generals were originally banned because they were the /same/ image dumps day after day. Image dumps on an imageboard are expected and fully supported. You were close, but missed the mark.
>>429412
Kill yourself.
>>430199
It wouldn't be a full answer, especially to dedicated shitposters, but I think it would certainly help addressing mindless, low-quality posts. Serious shitposters can probably only ever be addressed by mods, but the big problem is that there is a general decline in posting standards due to a rising number of habitual shitposters and people following their example.
The goal is mainly just to adjust the environment to emphasize higher quality posts on the board in a subtle fashion. I suspect that a huge quality of low-quality posts are just people who don't know how to have a proper discussion, are following the example of other shitposters, and/or just see their behavior as the standard for the site. These demographics shouldn't be motivated nor self-aware enough to go far out of their way to contradict this change, and ideally would slowly be phased out. If low-effort, habitual shitposters decline in number then the example they set will also disappear, threads will improve, and serious cases will stand out more for moderation and reporting. Right now the large number of habitual, minor shitposts create a smokescreen that makes it borderline impossible for the community to deal with actual problems.
And you're right, it will also be a nice general-purpose utility to just have short posts sage automatically. A lot of these types of posts (IE asking or answering minor questions) used to be saged voluntarily but the board state has become so fast that it's a moot point. This would sage for people automatically in these situations in a convenient fashion.
In the case of storytimes, isn't the situation virtually the same anyway? Assuming the OP is the one storytiming anyway.
>>430273
I can't tell if this is satire or heartfelt, and i first became a student of the myriad arts of trolling nine years ago. Well fucking done.
>>430199
Imagedumps (not storytime, as those usually have a fair share of discussion) are really dubious in my opinion, especially those that aren't actual anime and/or manga image dumps, or could be on boards like /c/ instead, but I'm overall neutral on the matter and they're far enough in the minority that a "wait and see" approach could work".
Overall I'm neutral on them though, at least as far as /a/ is concerned. I just really think that the issues this change aims to address are far more important than whether image dumps get to sit on the front page as easily as they did previously.
As for generals, they've really proven to create all sorts of issues in general. Even if they aren't glorified image dumps anymore, I still feel like in their current state they can attract some very negative posting behaviors. If anything they're even worse in that aspect than when they were back then. One of the aims for this would to be to encourage constructive discussion within generals, and help those that have exhausted their discussion to drop off the board, but I suspect it won't be so easy in their case.
>Descartes tries to shitpost cogito ergo sum
>doesn't bump thread, thread dies
You could do this client side. 4chan X has options to resort the index pages just like you can sort the catalog. Currently you can sort by bump order, last reply, creation date, post count, and file count. If people want it, it would be simple to add a new sort mode that shows threads with recent long replies.
I'm a little skeptical about post length as a measure of quality, though. The /r9k/ robot mainly serves to force people to make longer posts, and we all know how that ended up.
The part that couldn't be done client-side is the effect this would have on thread pruning. From that perspective, a change like this would be a plus because it makes mass necrobumping slightly harder. This part should treated as an independent issue, because you don't necessarily have to display threads in the order you're going to prune them.
50 characters seems a bit short for a cutoff. Maybe 100.
>>429412
tldr
>>430642
After experimenting with this on a few boards, on most boards the difference is small, but /pol/ is noticeably improved, and /b/ is made slightly worse (more /r9k/-like).
>>430642
The problem with doing things voluntarily (IE client-side) is that there will be virtually no effect unless it's applied collectively. For example, giving posters the ability to hide shitposts doesn't even come close to being a replacement for having a janny or mod to remove it. As you mentioned, there's also the difference with pruning, which in my opinion is quite significant to the process.
Post length isn't a perfect measure of quality, however I would argue that it is a prerequisite. A longer post is inherently going to have more room for content, take more time to type, and be able to present a wider variety of points and ideas (or possible errors). You simply cannot convey more complex ideas without having an adequately long post to contain them. Short posts can be good (to an extent) and long posts can be bad, which is why sage is used as a sort of middle ground rather than an actual posting limitation.
The issue with the robot is that it's not an intuitive answer: It targets unoriginal posts, not short posts. For that reason even if it more or less works toward the same end, it does so in an extremely inconsistent fashion, and is highly prone to errors and exploits. Add in the chosen subject matter for the /r9k/ board, and it's no surprise that the board turned into a disaster zone. It also directly affects anon's ability to post, incentivizing them to work around it. In my opinion, the robot really doesn't actually do a good job of enforcing originality either, considering it can't take into account difference in context or act on a conceptual basis rather than an arbitrary one.
Character minimums for bumping on the other hand will directly change what type of posts can bump, and thus receive front page exposure and prolong threads, to a type of post that will have a higher general likelihood of being conducive to discussion. Because it doesn't directly affect anyone's ability to post there will also be lower incentive to circumvent it.
>>430674
>the chosen subject matter for the /r9k/ board
There originally was no chosen subject matter for /r9k/, and I think that's part of how it turned out the way it did. My theory is that within a topic, longer posts will tend to correlate with more thought-out posts, but when there are multiple topics, different topics will naturally tend to have different post lengths, and the primary effect of a post length minimum will be to bias the board toward certain topics. This ultimately hurts a random board by making it less random.
>>430642
As for the actual character cutoff, they could theoretically be pretty generous about it. Thread movement should naturally slow down due to the reduced number of bumps, however a lower number would probably be preferable (especially to start) to make adjustment more natural for posters.
The 50 figure might indeed be too small, especially when accounting for things like post links and quoted text.
>>430670
I'm not sure I'd call /b/ a discussion board, personally.
That said, due to the goal being to improve board behavior over time, not seeing a big difference right off the bat isn't that surprising. If anything it's probably desirable, as any massively visible change would be more jarring to posters.
>>430675
I think I see what you're getting at: Certain things will tend to more developed discussions compared to others, ergo giving it an advantage in this sort of system.
The point I disagree with is the idea that this is inherently less random than the standard board state, however. If anything, I'd say it's the same situation but the exact opposite: Certain topics (IE trollbait) will naturally attract higher quantities of short, low-quality posts, giving them prevalence over more thoughtful discussions which take time to formulate and lengthier (and thus more time-consuming) posts.
For more random boards this isn't necessarily a bad thing. However for boards intended to house discussion, which /a/ for example generally seems considered to be, this is less than ideal. I think that the lengthier posts should indeed receive priority over the shorter ones in such a case.
Also, while certain topics may have a higher tendency toward discussion, I don't think that you'll necessarily be seeing the same discussions crop up all the time. Proper discussions are more likely to achieve a satisfying conclusion and move on than the kinds of opinionated shitflinging that you can see repeated ad nauseum in any harem general.
>>430677
On second thought, it would probably just be better if post links and greentext didn't count toward the sage limit (except maximum character limit, for obvious reasons) in general. It would help manage greentexting and prevent circumventing the filter via quotes.
>>430144
I never thought about it that way, but yeah, any board that focuses specifically on image dumping could improve by implementing this. In general you can emphasize any manner of posting but limiting the bumpability of other types of posts.
Question.
I regularly do mangadumps on, /a/.
The implementation of a system like this would be actually make it much harder to do these dumps.
I know they do these very often in /co/ as well.
What would you say to this or would you just want us storytimers to put a sentence every page or so?
This would also make it bad for the autodumpers especially.
>>432227
I'd ask what you normally do, since to my knowledge OPs can't bump on either board anyway.
Dump threads do seem like a special case because they tend to produce decent levels of discussion, but need time to build up for it to happen. It's possible that delaying bumps for those threads might cause them to prune before getting to that point, but it's also possible that delay will be nullified by the new board state (as threads should be bumped less often in general).
The only regularly-occurring style of manga dump that doesn't feature the OP dumping, to my knowledge, are One Page Threads, and in my opinion those aren't much more than glorified rec threads in my opinion.
Also, if nobody responds to the thread and it gets pruned, who is to say it deserved to live in the first place? Not every thread gets to the bump limit by default.
Overall though, I don't want people to stop bumping. Neither do I think they will stop bumping. Everyone will know about the autosage before long, and they will know that all they need to do to bump a thread is right a somewhat long-ish post. What's important about this is that it will change two things:
>Less people will bump threads unwittingly. Whether they're just doing quick shitposts in a shitpost thread, or they're a newfag forgetting to sage a bait thread, they will be less likely to go out of their way to meet the requirement for a bump.
>People who want to bump a thread because they think it's good and want it to stay alive can still do so. They're just incentivized to write a somewhat longer post than just "bump" or dumping an image. They might patronizingly write a somewhat detailed question or opinion, with only the intent to bump, yet they will have contributed more to the thread than if they had done one of the previous options.
This is why I think having a relatively low bar is still rather important. Bumping (without pasta) still needs to be somewhat feasible.
>>432357
What I, and I'm guessing others as well do, is get two IPs. I personally use the 3G of my phone for the OP and dump with my wifi.
There are a lot of examples on /co/ but here's one I've recently done >>136883552 which is basically a Berserk dump.
Those are outliers where a ton of people reply but when I do more normal ones of rando manga I'd say 30 replies or so is pretty average for around 150 pages.
However, the reason for few replies of dumps like those and especially for dumps like these >>136900992 is because those manga have either no fanbase, are unknown, or can't hold a thread for itself.
I think those dumps are important for /a/. Most especially because they try to showcase and spread manga that are hidden and not mainstream and provides some variety for the board.
Don't get me wrong. I actually wouldn't mind this sort of autosage as I would agree it would help increase post quality. I just want it to make known that there are those that still do storytimes, albeit quite a few of us.
>>432456
Fair enough. I honestly think that this might have an overall beneficial effect for storytime threads. You may need to encourage people to question and comment to help keep the thread bumped, but it would make the thread a lot more involved than just several consecutive images with a periodic "are people still reading?" or really baseline responses.
What a supremely awful and foolish opinion, OP.
And I suppose if I ended the post there, it would count as a sage.
As someone who dumps manga on /a/ regularly, reads manga with anons regularly, and oft participates in One Page Threads I think you have no idea what you're talking about.
>>432601
>And I suppose if I ended the post there, it would count as a sage.
I'd say that's a point in my favor, anon.
>As someone who dumps manga on /a/ regularly, reads manga with anons regularly, and oft participates in One Page Threads I think you have no idea what you're talking about.
As someone who does the same, while reading manga and watching anime in my own time so I can discuss them to a better extent than something dumped 5 minutes prior, I think all of the aforementioned threads (which make up less than 10% of all threads on /a/ at any given point in time) could benefit from some more extensive discussion. Especially one page threads, they're starving for fresh content as it is.
Hell, if you bothered to read the thread before typing your kneejerk reaction you'd know that this isn't even intended, nor going to, negatively impact proper image dump threads.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
>>432706
