Let me give you two examples from my context where an empty post makes sense for us, are well accepted and do not harm a civilized discourse: Over here Discourse is used basically as a mailing list replacement.
- Someone wants to write a quick note, e.g. “meeting 8pm in the red house EOM”. So they write an empty email, just containing the note in the subject.
- Someone forwards a message to the mailing list/Discourse, technically without additional own content (e.g. forwarding a message to a group from someone outside the group to spread information or a small circle discussed a message out of discourse via email in beforehand and then the content is copy-pasted to an email to discourse, containing “forwarded message”-html-tags and thus is currently perceived as “empty body” by Discourse)
I pledge for allowing “0” as lower boundary (and honestly fail to see the benefit of currently allowed “1” over “0”), the default could still be a more sage/sane value of, e.g. “10” to ensure that it is a consciousness decision by the admin. IMHO an admin of such platform as Discourse should be trusted to make good decisions for their needs, guided by sensible defaults. Thus I do not see any harm in allowing empty posts as an option.
Let me clearly express my gratitude for the focus on the philosophy of civilized discourse by Discourse! The thoughts put into it and the features derived from it were one reason why I opted for discourse.