Allow only (x) consecutive replies in the same topic

Contribute Feature

AI-generated summary

The discussion revolves around implementing a feature to limit consecutive replies in a forum topic. dax proposes a site setting to restrict users from posting more than a certain number of consecutive replies, forcing them to edit their previous post instead. This is to prevent users from treating the forum like a chat and to reduce the workload of moderators.

codinghorror agrees to implement the feature in the 2.2 release, and sam suggests a simpler approach by forcing users to edit their last post if it’s still editable and owned by them.

tophee and merefield discuss the possibility of allowing users to post consecutive replies in certain situations, such as when responding to different aspects of a topic or to individual posts.

The feature is implemented with a default setting of 3 consecutive replies, and codinghorror notes that topic owners, admins, and moderators are immune from this restriction.

exetico requests the ability to define consecutive replies per category, trust level, or whitelist specific users, and codinghorror suggests changing the topic owner to the user who needs to post consecutively.

James_Cribbs asks if it’s possible to change the setting for a specific category, and codinghorror agrees that category moderators should also be immune from this restriction.

nbianca confirms that category moderators will be able to have unlimited consecutive posts once a PR is merged, and JammyDodger explains that admins can raise the limit of consecutive replies if needed.

Overall, the discussion focuses on finding a balance between preventing excessive consecutive replies and allowing flexibility for users and moderators in specific situations.

1

I am often (too often) in the situation of having to merge more than one user’s consecutive replies and I often find myself responding “this is a forum, not a chat :rage:, don’t hit the reply button each row you write”.

This is a bad behavior in a forum and I would personally prefer if users were allowed a number of consecutive replies limited by site settings or category settings (at least up to TL 3).

In this way users are forced to learn how to use forum tools properly, leaving the moderators free to do much more useful work.

A user trying to respond consecutively the second, third or fourth time will see a pop up that say

“No more than x consecutive replies are allowed. Edit your previous reply instead or wait for someone to answer you”.

Note that newuser max replies per topic and sequential replies threshold are different site settings from what I have proposed.
The first is specific only to new users (and not for consecutive replies), the second shows only a warning but does not prevent the publication of consecutive replies.

EDIT: maybe a setting by category rather than a global site setting could be much more useful.

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Rate-limit first-responders in specific categories
Discourse Version 2.2
2

You would probably want to allow consecutive replies to different people. For example… Handling trolls with multiple accounts over VPNs - #5 by codinghorror

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3

I completely agree with @dax

This is going to be an excellent feature - if implemented.

My discourse site is for “Students” and a good percentage of folks post messages as if they are on chat. And one of the tasks that keep the mods busy in my site is “merging consecutive posts”. So, if this feature as proposed by @dax is implemented its going to be awesome.

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4

Perhaps we just add a very simple site setting that forces people to edit last post IF last post is still editable and owned by them. Apply only to topics, not messages.

This can be opt in per site. It would be very safe and have no terrible fail modes where last post is no longer editable and mods keep on getting contacted via flags.

@codinghorror should we slot something for 2.2?

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5

Yeah I do think this would be a useful setting. I will add to 2.2 release topic.

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6

Would it complicate things a lot to check if the last x posts are owned by the user?

My thinking is that it sometimes does make sense to post a second consecutive reply, e.g. when it’s important that a message/notification gets sent out or where you reply to two different aspects of the topics and want to make it easier for the topic to be split.

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7

Could we design it so you can’t reply to the Topic more than X times but this is not enforced if you reply to individual posts explicitly using the individual posts’ reply buttons?

That would be a good compromise, no?

Part of the justification would be that splitting up a single post by quoting individuals is a lot more complex a task for a new user than simply hitting the reply button of each post you wish to respond to. It’s also much more tricky to quote from multiple posts on mobile.

I see many justified cases of users replying individually to several different people in a row.

8

I don’t really agree with this being a default on setting, I think it is optional and highly targeted at specific communities.

I think making this too flexible here is not ideal for a few reasons.

Say we add a setting for max_consecutive_replies and tie that to trust_level we would totally lock off certain responses once the edit window is over, this is a pretty harsh default.

Renaming the setting to max_consecutive_replies_unless_outside_of_edit_window is going to be a nightmare to communicate.

I prefer to keep this very simple for now… a setting for “if user can edit last post, make them edit the last post”, default off.

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9

I didn’t mean to imply that it should be default on. My thinking was rather: if a specific community (e.g. the one @dax mentioned in the OP) decides they need to turn turn this on because of certain users, chances are it will affect the experienced/well behaved users negatively that they used before. The simplicity of the setting comes at a price, so I thought this could be solved by allowing x consecutive replies. Another possibility could be to enforce edit last post only for certain TLs or a specific group. (I didn’t understand this:

)

10

This is still scheduled for the 2.2 release!

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11

Would replies by email be exempt?

Use case: some members in our forum will reply by email in bursts (on the weekend, for example). They may reply to posts #1, #3, and #7, but their replies are added sequentially in the topic, i.e. #10, #11, and #12.

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13

This is now in and complete, default on with a value of 3, so it triggers on the ** fourth consecutive reply**.

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14

Is this supported? It is super annoying when a forum rejects the incomming email. :slight_smile:

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15

Unlikely, since the same logic would apply. Feel free to modify the site setting as needed for your site.

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16

3 looks like a good default.

I challenge this.

I actually encourage my users to post individual replies as these are easier to move. If a user (or I) merges replies to two or more different users you can end up with a post that you can’t split into a new Topic if they start to diverge in subject matter. One to keep an eye on.

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17

While translating I began wondering this:

No more than 1 reply is allowed. Please edit your previous reply instead, or wait for someone to reply to you.

Shouldn’t this be something like “Consecutive replies aren’t allowed”?

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18

Yeah, I see your point, technically they are not consecutive yet but they would be with the next one which is disallowed. So I’ll add that.

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19

이 기능을 조금만 확장해 주셨으면 합니다. 예를 들어, 모드/관리자가 카테고리별, 각 게시물별, 또는 신뢰도(trust level)에 따라 연속 답변 수를 정의할 수 있도록 하거나, 특정 사용자를 화이트리스트에 등록할 수 있도록 하는 것 말이죠.

이 작업을 위해 많은 시간이 필요할까요?

예시/우리의 경우:
특정 주제에서 같은 사용자가 자주 게시물을 올립니다. 그런 경우에는 괜찮습니다. 하지만 한도에 도달하면 수정(edit)을 해야 하는 상황이 발생하죠. 그런데, 새 게시물을 작성하는 대신 마지막 게시물을 수정하도록 강제될 때, 다른 사용자에게 알림이 전송되지 않는 문제가 있습니다. :slight_smile:

20

관리자 도구를 사용해 첫 번째 게시물을 대상으로 주제 소유자를 해당 사용자로 변경하세요. 주제 소유자는 이 규칙에 면제됩니다.

5개의 좋아요
Max_replies initializing at member trust level?
21

아, 그거 몰랐어요. 사실 그 사용자는 해당 토픽의 소유자였는데, 디스코스로 마이그레이션하기 전인지 후인지 확실하지 않아요. 그래서 일단 소유권을 제 계정으로 바꿨다가 다시 그 사용자에게 돌려놨어요. 예상대로 잘 작동하길 바랍니다.

팁 주셔서 감사합니다! :smile:

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