Arbitrary comment limits are bad

1

FNWGMOBDVZXDNW 2016 Dec 5, 11:39am

Was it a constraint to force a certain type of expression, like what you get with twitter or haiku?

2

zzyzzx 2016 Dec 5, 12:02pm

YesYNot says

Was it a constraint to force a certain type of expression, like what you get with twitter or haiku?

User VARCHAR2(32767) instead of VARCHAR2(4000)???

As per Dans suggestion you can use a CLOB, but I don't know how many time you have actually used one, but it does slow things down noticeably when you have to use CLOBS for text.

3

Ceffer 2016 Dec 5, 12:11pm

It's a douche logorrhea back stop.

4

Dan8267 2016 Dec 5, 12:45pm

zzyzzx says

As per Dans suggestion you can use a CLOB, but I don't know how many time you have actually used one, but it does slow things down noticeably when you have to use CLOBS for text.

Not a problem if you separate the comment record from the text as shown in the example in the original post. The varchars will still occupy fixed lengths in a table. Since the text of a comment can span varchars, no clob-related penalty is paid. Nor is text concatenation require as you can simply write each text bucket sequentially.

5

curious2 2016 Dec 5, 1:03pm

Dan8267 says

What is the purpose of comment limits?

PatNet is a forum, and you should start a blog, so that you can link to your blog for more. Please consider Scott Adams's Dilbert blog and Slate Star Codex for examples. You post and write brilliant and fascinating things, and I have learned a lot from you, but you can go on at length and never realize an error in paragraph 2 has lost your audience. JodyChunder summarized very well an excellent use of PatNet: you can test an idea on a track for a lap or two, see how it does, what reaction(s) it gets, maybe refine it, iterate based on feedback. If your comments are too long, the only feedback you get is TLDR, which doesn't really help you iterate.

Twitter succeeded based on a 140 character limit, which seemed almost absurdly short at the time. In retrospect, it reminds me of something [corrected - see below] Blaise Pascal wrote: "I only wrote a long letter because I didn't have time to write a short one."

If you consider the size of your audience, and value the average audience member's time at least a tenth as highly as your own, you might use more of your own time to write something shorter. If you do that on a blog and it becomes popular, you can get ad revenue and have your own business.

IMHO, PatNet provides a sometimes helpful forum to say almost anything, but it gets overrun by trolls, Nazis, ignorant racist and/or anti-semitic losers, and other people whom better advertisers prefer to avoid being associated with. Slate Star Codex seems to deliver higher average quality by having a primary author who reads broadly and presents deeply detailed analysis, and moderates comments indirectly by banning the most problematic ignorant trolls whose net "contributions" subtract value rather than adding value.

Although you are much smarter than some others here (for example, racist, anti-semitic loser Mark D), that difference is wasted in a forum that gives each of you the same platform, and you fail to monetize it. You seem to understand a much wider variety of people than Patrick does, but he seems to understand business better than you, because all your writing here is controlled primarily by him, and your work builds his site, not your own.

6

FuckTheMainstreamMedia 2016 Dec 5, 1:20pm

Probably has a lot to do with the suicide rate of those that read Dans comments.

7

Ceffer 2016 Dec 5, 1:32pm

Patrick has arbitrarily set my character limit to

8

Dan8267 2016 Dec 6, 1:29pm

curious2 says

PatNet is a forum, and you should start a blog, so that you can link to your blog for more.

www.iQJGmjnc8LU?start=7

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Dan8267 2016 Dec 6, 1:34pm

On a more serious note, conversations involving only short posts do not allow the discussion of nuance, details that matter, or evidence to support claims. As such, the short form of discussions inherently limits the usefulness of such conversations. There's a reason that small talk never helps society progress socially, economically, politically, scientifically, or in any other way.

I'd rather have a few long and satisfying conversations than many short and meaningless ones.

10

curious2 2016 Dec 6, 1:43pm

Dan8267 says

short posts do not allow the discussion of nuance, details that matter, or evidence to support claims.

??? I thought you might recall that here on the Interwebs, we have a thing called hyperlinks, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee. WIth sites like bit.ly, you can support a tweet with evidence greater than the ancient Library of Alexandria. Maybe the Soylent isn't working out as well as hoped.

11

Dan8267 2016 Dec 6, 4:29pm

curious2 says

I thought you might recall that here on the Interwebs, we have a thing called hyperlinks, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee. WIth sites like bit.ly, you can support a tweet with evidence greater than the ancient Library of Alexandria. Maybe the Soylent isn't working out as well as hoped.

How is supplying an external link to a long discussion easier or less disruptive to the conversation than simply including a long post, collapse part of it if desired? Why force the reader to go to a different page just to read a reply either opening a new tab or losing the current document? Yeah, it can be done easily, but all it does is make the mechanics of having a discussion much harder.

There is still no case to be made for limiting posts to 2000 characters or limiting post size in general.

12

curious2 2016 Dec 6, 9:36pm

Dan8267 says

How is supplying an external link to a long discussion easier or less disruptive to the conversation than simply including a long post, collapse part of it if desired?

It's a bit like writing with footnotes. If you are going to write anonymously online, you can be either
(a) an anonymous voice saying things that might be true or false, or
(b) an anonymous voice quoting things that are verifiable, and assembling a cogent analysis.
Linking requires more work, but it assembles a handy reference on each topic. You write from force of logic, like theoretical rationalism, but others rely more heavily on empiricism. I suppose it's like the difference between string theory and quantum mechanics. String theory can be interesting, but the predictions of quantum mechanics can be verified.

BTW, on a related point, Quigley seemed recently to believe some of the false allegations from "Pizzagate." I respect Quigley's honesty and intelligence, but his comments proved only that an honest and intelligent person can be fooled into believing a bizarre Internet hoax. I was (and remain) curious to know who had fooled him, but he never answered. Personally, I prefer verifiable information, though bizarre hoaxes fooling people seem to be an observable recurring phenomenon worth learning more about.

13

Patrick 2016 Dec 6, 9:40pm

It's an attempt to get people to be more succinct. I think there is value inherent in brevity. Length and complexity are costs.

The following quote is often misattributed to Mark Twain:

"I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter." This quote is by the 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal (1623-62), written in a letter to a friend. The original French version was: "Je n'ai fait cette lettre - ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."

I just did a select of the average comment length and made the limit about 4x that. Maybe it's not enough, but it's an experiment I'd like to continue at least for a while.

mysql> select avg(length(comment_content)) from comments;
+------------------------------+
| avg(length(comment_content)) |
+------------------------------+
|                     585.3842 |
+------------------------------+

14

curious2 2016 Dec 6, 9:47pm

rando says

The following quote is often misattributed to Mark Twain:

Thanks! But, I noticed an error in the French grammar, and searched for the original, which said:

"Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."

The phrase "celle-ci" means basically "this here". "Celle" means this, and "ici" means here, and when you combine them you get "celle-ci." Also, "celle-ci" is feminine, substituting for "cette lettre" (this letter), which is also feminine. (If it were masculine, it would say ceci, substituting for "ce document" (this document). See, for example, the famous quotation, "Ceci n'est pas un chapeau.")

15

Dan8267 2016 Dec 6, 9:51pm

curious2 says

Linking requires more work, but it assembles a handy reference on each topic.

Linking is what I do, but those links take up characters as do any blockquotes. And linking to a large article, paper, or stats site without quoting the relevant section is not particularly useful.

Plus simply linking to a blog post makes for a monologue, not a dialog, and I want to be challenged. Granted, I want to be challenged with intelligent, supported arguments, and PatNet rarely provides that.

16

Dan8267 2016 Dec 6, 10:03pm

rando says

It's an attempt to get people to be more succinct. I think there is value inherent in brevity. Length and complexity are costs.

This is a partial truth, but is also misleading. Yes, all other things being equal, the shorter the post the better since you are saying more in fewer words. However, being succinct is not the same as being brief. A 500-word post that says a lot is more succinct than the average 50 word post. It's about information density. Brevity at the expense of detail, factual support, or handling nuance is not succinct; it's just incomplete.

Which is a better post?

Post 1
The Ford Xpod is a shit car.

Post 2
The Ford Xpod is a shit car because
1. It gets 10 mpg.
2. The average repair costs are $300/month.
3. The mean time between breakdowns is in the worst 5% for all cars.
4. The handling is non-responsive.

Clearly the second post, although much longer, is also much better because it gives the reasons behind the assessment.

Another way to look at this is with Amazon reviews. Which reviews carry more weight when you are deciding between products? The review that says "this product is great" or the one that lists the pros and cons and the appropriate situations for the product? Essentially ideas are products, and you want the most detailed and complete review of them.

Finally, clarity of writing is far more important than brevity, particularly when it comes to the ease of reading. There is often a trade off between short text and clear text. Again, this is related to information density and the fact that the more explicit, and thus wordy, you are, the easier it is for the reader to understand what you mean.

17

curious2 2016 Dec 6, 10:04pm

Dan8267 says

Clearly the second post, although much longer, is also much better because it gives the reasons behind the assessment.

You could better divide the second Post into a Post and four Comments, if they were too long to combine into one.

Dan8267 says

with Amazon reviews. Which reviews carry more weight when you are deciding between products?

The ones from reviewers whom I trust. Any paid shill can copy and paste or blather on about whatever they're paid to say about a product.

18

Dan8267 2016 Dec 6, 10:06pm

I don't think Patrick is limiting the original posts of threads to 2000 characters. Only the comments are being limited to that. Those are the posts I meant.

19

Dan8267 2016 Dec 7, 8:59am

Another idea. People don't care how many bytes are being used in the database or how many characters are written in a post. They care about how many characters their eyeballs read.

So how about collapsing blockquotes. That reduces eyeball reading character counts much in the same way that footnotes would. It would also be less intrusive especially if users could opt out of the auto-collapsing.

20

curious2 2016 Dec 13, 8:06pm

@Dan8267, although I think the comment length limit is OK, I found a way around it. How ironic :)

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21

Patrick 2016 Dec 13, 8:55pm

curious2 says

although I think the comment length limit is OK, I found a way around it. How ironic :)

How did you do it?

22

curious2 2016 Dec 13, 9:07pm

Edit

patrick.net

Arbitrary comment limits are bad

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