Consecutive Replies limit whitelist and Saving server resources for longer topics

Support
1

https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-many-images-can-discourse-handle-per-topic/325051/19

Why are these other topics getting closed without Giving chances to add updates and while there is no strong clarity on solution… ?

For example, the last reply from your team member suggests

Does this mean create a New topic, add 100 images per reply and add back to back replies with 100 images fo each reply ?

The Communities which i have seen has a Limit for Consecutive replies, is it possible to whitelist the restriction for me based on request ?

Even if i where to create a New topic with a very short title like

XXX XXXX XXXX XXX XXXX XXX XXXX

Inner content, → Content_Explanation_within 500 Characters and
Requesting Staffs to unlist the topic and keep the topic unlisted(until the full project is uploaded), Will message Staff after the Project is updated.

{Staff unlists it}

I start uploading project images

I wouldn’t mind others who have access to the topic link watching what’s Getting posted in the topic because the project is already finished and they will eventually end up seeing it so privacy is never a problem while discourse doesnt give importance for privacy…

But there is a limit on consecutive replies like only 3 replies, So lets assume 185 images per reply, then it would be like 8 back to back replies for 1480 images or maybe there would be a need to post another reply in case total images exceeds more than 1480 images.

Im annoyed because while i posted a topic in Misc category Last year, Discourse allowed unlimited number of back to back replies which is the usual category which i post but recently while i posted back to back replies to help with Scripts Guide in the Web Compatibility category, i could not post back to back replies for more than 3 replies.

https://community.brave.com/t/please-help-how-can-i-force-re-enable-an-extension-which-google-disabled-as-malware/553069/13

cannot add a New reply so had to update the Last reply with New update :

I do not know whether the Consecutive replies limit is applied for certain categories or updated now for the entire site but whatever the case is, its annoying discourse finds time to implement this kind of strange features(Consecutive replies restriction limit) but openly saying they wont work on new features like what i requested last time for See More feature and claiming the timeframe Expectations to be “Silly” to suggest/expect it… While Discourse claims it is more advanced on their marketing page, features like what i asked “see more” shouldnt be that hard to implement it.

See Quora, They have “Continue Reading” for almost all of the Answers now. It would be awesome if discourse can take the experience even further to manually allow users when users want continue reading to take place(Set Exact Line break position on where continue reading takes place).

For Example,users can implement continue reading after X number of characters are added.

illustration

Paragraph 1 ~2878 characters
{5 images}
Paragraph 2 ~1587 characters
{3 images}
Paragraph 3 ~3178 characters
{8 images}
Paragraph 4 ~5278 characters
{2 images}
Paragraph 5 ~6927 characters
{6 images}
Topic creator realizes content getting bigger so i can implement continue reading feature by myself so upcoming content will be loaded only while continue reading/See more button is clicked.
Paragraph 6 ~2878 characters
{5 images}
Paragraph 7 ~1587 characters
{3 images}
Paragraph 8 ~3178 characters
{8 images}
Paragraph 9 ~5278 characters
{2 images}
Paragraph 10 ~6927 characters
{6 images}

If discourse detects users have failed to add continue reading button feature by themselves(as your casual everyday user who use discourse rarely isnt going to take the time to explore all of the formatting options present in the topic creator), and if discourse Servers detect the posted topic exceeds 3000 Characters and has no continue reading button set, The Discourse Server can set continue reading feature by itself on behalf of users for all users whenever topic/replies exceeds 3000 Characters.

I do not understand whats the need for “Lazy Loading”…, While its very clear 95% of the Population have Limited Attention Span and wont be able to keep up with Longer topics and most likely wont read the topic fully, there is no need to constantly have everything loaded automatically as scrolling is happening and Letting every users take higher space for each reply… So what i want to say is, Let there be Limits and Make users to do the Extra work!

Extra work → Having to click “Continue Reading/See More” buttons many number of times for as long as they want to content to be consumed, There is nothing wrong in adding extra work because most of the time they are getting the information for free, Why give some random users on the internet 1st preference over the discourse servers if majority of the population have limited attention spans?, By Constantly loading everything you’re wasting server resources/Electricity in your data centers and Even Internet bandwidth.

For this topic instance of “Consecutive replies limit annoyance” and Previous topic of “How many images discourse can handle ?”

The Easier Solution for both of these topics are

Paragraph 1 ~2878 characters
{5 images}
Paragraph 2 ~1587 characters
{3 images}
Paragraph 3 ~3178 characters
{8 images}

/Set Continue_Reading_Button_Stop_Auto_Load

Paragraph 4 ~5278 characters
{2 images}

/Set Continue_Reading_Button_Stop_Auto_Load

Paragraph 5 ~6927 characters
{6 images}

Paragraph 6 ~2878 characters
{5 images}

/Set Continue_Reading_Button_Stop_Auto_Load

Paragraph 7 ~1587 characters
{3 images}
Paragraph 8 ~3178 characters
{8 images}

/Set Continue_Reading_Button_Stop_Auto_Load

Paragraph 9 ~5278 characters
{2 images}
Paragraph 10 ~6927 characters
{6 images}

/Set Continue_Reading_Button_Stop_Auto_Load

100 + Paragraphs where i can set continue reading button accordingly whenever i want to and for as many number of times So by following this unique method we can add massive walls of text without thinking about we are hitting a certain limit… Since Contents will be loaded only if the end users do the actual work of clicking “Continue Reading” button, Performance will be improved, Server resources can be saved and Every image will get loaded properly.

Note: I know discourse have 32k character limit, but even if i upload 1000+ images, i wont hit the 32k limit and the ~5278 characters which i said in illustration wont be actual characters but rather they are screenshot of ~5278 characters and the images which i added { } in illustration would be illustration or storyboards images.

only discourse makes fun of my expectations because in most instances while i asked for Feature request on Gameloft forum and Blackplayer EX community, the developers were Awesome and fulfilled my requests on their apps(Asphalt9/Blackplayer EX) within 3 weeks, not one time for one request, But many times for most of the requests… What Separates Gameloft forum and Blackplayer EX dev from discourse developers is that these other developers are cool and willing to do more their users to keep them happy whereas discourse thinks more in a way like, Why we should work on something for free ? What’s in it for me ?

2

The way I see it, yes.

That would be for the admin of the site to decide. It is a site setting.

Not at all! They are one of the most helpful and eager support teams I have seen! [1]

They wouldn’t think that, I’m sure. If it was the case, self-hosting Discourse may not be an option!

There were suggestions given in that topic; why don’t you try them out, but not here in meta.discourse.org, maybe on your own instance.
Come to think of it, why can’t you upload onto Google Drive or some upload platform, and just post the link? Wouldn’t that work?

  1. This is not meant to be an angry, frustrated tone. The exclamation marks merely serve to emphasise my point. ↩︎

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3

The limit I know excludes the author of the first post

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Have you read about how Discourse prioritizes feature requests?
How do we decide what goes into each release of Discourse?
I think no one else in the past 10 years has suggested that feature, so the Rule of Three hasn’t even been reached yet.

I guess that doesn’t motivate anyone of them to build a feature for you.
Perhaps a different behaviour would increase your chances. But saying ‘I want this’ and setting a very tight deadline won’t help. Should they interrupt work on a project for a paying customer to implement your feature?

6 Likes
5

Can you provide me technical details on why you think this is complex ?

Bard says this feature isnt that time consuming as others make it out to be.

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Imagine this, user clicks continue reading, then they will see a fancy loading Gif and only then then the truncated parts which are present inside continue reading,->>>>> gets actually loaded from servers into the topic.
ezgif-6-c31386606c

If this behavior is done for all truncated parts, then back to back replies wont necessarily be needed as server easily receives a break between each truncated parts and the added images inside each truncated parts Where the images inside truncated parts gets loaded{only while continue reading is clicked}.

On the Gif, Replace “Generating imagery…” with " Loading Truncated Parts… " or “Retrieving Additional Contents of the topic from Server… Please wait.”

So if i create the topic, unlimited number of back to back replies is allowed ? if thats the case, Posting 8 back to back replies will be my backup plan but at first,its important for me to try something to bring some innovation where it needs discourse team co-operation.

Thanks for your confirmation about back to back replies limit.
Here is my plan, At 1st, i will load 1st 185 images into topic creator, copy all of the !upload details to a temp document in google docs where i label it as Part 1/8

Next, add the Next 185 images again into the topic creator, copy all of the !upload details to another new temp document in google docs where i label it as Part 2/8

Repeat the Process until part 8 is reached and if additional parts required, i will follow the same process again. This will be useful to get all of the project contents and 8 replies being added back to back again real fast within 3 minutes, if i only start uploading images of each parts after part 1/8 gets added to the project topic, then it would end up taking like 2 or 3 hours for the entire project contents getting uploaded into the Project topic…

As is said, this is backup plan where while this method works, it ends up revealing massive walls of text for everyone who opens the topic, the method which i suggested improves First impression and Adds Futurism.

6

You were given multiple workarounds, posting 1500 images to a topic is an unusual request and supporting features to do so is not a priority.

You would have to ask to the admin of the forum in question. The team building Discourse does not control how individual Discourse sites operate.

It’s possible the admin of the site in question does not want someone posting thousands of images spread across dozens of consecutive posts, I would recommend asking them.

Perhaps try to have Bard implement it then. You will not win any favors by being told something by multiple humans, only to ask AI and claim it knows better.

You will also not ever get a feature developed by being argumentative and complaining about the Discourse team. You have been warned before.

Your feature request has been received and is understood. It will be prioritized alongside every other feature request. Continuing to post about it will not help.

4 Likes
7

No Multiple topics, Its going to be only 1 topic with multiple back to back replies.

To avoid back to back replies and to reduce bandwidth for people who click on topic, i asked the truncated feature “Retrieving Additional Contents of this topic from the Server, Please wait”, So by having this feature, only users who actually wants the topic to be read would end up clicking the continue reading button(which inturn shows "Retrieving Additional content… ") and have the contents loaded on their browser accordingly as they make progression. It gives opportunity for users of all communities to add a lot of images as discourse implemented logic to automatically add a continue reading button for all posts of users who have added/uploaded more than 3 images on a reply But failed to set continue reading button by themselves.

user did not set continue reading button = continue reading button shows at the end of 1st 3 images
users set continue reading button multiple times = continue reading button will be positioned exactly at the position/Line break which users has set.

If by surprise discourse implements this feature fast before the project gets ready, on the project, While i will add continue reading button multiple times accordingly to my needs, i will also add a Loom video on the topic scrolling the Entire document so users will know what they are going to view in the topic without necessarily having all of the added images in the topic being necessarily loaded on their browser/device…

The “continue reading” button is more sort of “consent” button and if we can set multiple continue reading buttons in a topic which can be seen many times as users are making progression in the topic, it would be cool.

8

Hi!

It does.

Are you kidding me. If someone is posting 185 images one should assume that they’re doing so in order to spam the forum.

Because it very obviously is. Discourse has many, many feature requests, so to pretend that 14-21 days to fulfill a feature request that may or may not end up getting used by a user who does not respect the company, product, or time, isn’t silly is insane. There are paying users to serve, and with a constraint of basically 2-3 weeks you’re delusional if you think anyone’s getting that done, especially for users like you. This isn’t personal; anyone being dumb and asking for features with tighter requirements than a paying user would even think about suggesting is silly. These people have things to do and testing to make sure the site doesn’t break because of a feature and probably more I don’t know about.

Let’s ask Bard since you trust it so much.

image
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Why are you pretending that adding user hostile features is better than keeping a perfectly fine lazy loading system.

It will only get loaded if you need it with lazy loading, so there is essentially no difference between an annoying read more and lazy loading in terms of bandwith and electricy (which isn’t even truely an issue you’d solve even if lazy loading was worse)

I’m sure those other requests were reasonable, but you simply cannot expect the Discourse developers to be the same as those other game developers.

Discourse is literally open source. It is free to use already, and you can create your own fork and implement the load more button yourself, nobody is stopping you. You can even ask Bard to help you!

9

Did you see the last reply ?

Exactly what i wanted, if people are easily annoyed by walls of text then i just want them to Exit without creating drama as my target audience are only people Who are very well capable of Reading 350+ Pages book on a Single Go which only vey few people could do it(Most People have Limited Attention Spans and Simply wont be able to keep up).

By Following the unique style which is added in my above replies, It Ends up Giving opportunity for Every user to Continue reading the book based on the topic interest(and the Pacing Style gets carried out by the creator) instead of ignoring reading Just because its too long which is the current scenario as your current Lazy loading feature ends up Revealing Everything in a topic Easily.

I want the End user’s behavior of fast scrolling a topic, Loading all of the image Assets 1st before making a decision on whether they should read or not to be Stopped… Not happy with the 1st batch of 50 images ? People can Just Leave, Why Waste internet bandwidth and Server resources while someone is essentially going to End up Not Reading ?

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I also Posted another request

And @joffreyjaffeux closed the request within 2 days… With this Request, i was expecting some immersion in the topic creator, For Example while you add an image to Google Docs, The image feels sticked/Blended into document and allows Real time cropping and resizing Where it Ends up Making the Experience Futuristic…

See the Video

See 01:57, The images are of different sizes and you can see that image size differences only while Ctrl+A is used and for someone who is seeing the document for 1st time, it will feel like Bard conversation has been embedded into the document in a more advanced way and Wont feel like Multiple Screenshots of Bard Conversation being added into the Google Docs, I Wanted an immersive Experience like that to be present on discourse communities, unfortunately its not easy for me to explain the correct behavior technically but if you watch the video, you will Gain Clarity, Watch how the 4 images of Bard conversation Looks Super immersive on Google Docs and the way how it looks here… Why cant we have immersive experience like Google Docs ?

Discourse lacks these kind of features and have imperfections which im perfectly fine as we cannot expect every feature which are present on a word processor like Google docs to be on discourse , I can ask but if real time cropping and resizing is too complex to implement, i can deal with the current style…i still dont understand why people would care about file name for images uploaded to communities, adding download button for each image, etc, Maybe they should have added a Download all images button in this area,

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So with this one download button people will be able to download all images at once using single click and will also end up knowing file name of certain images if they wanted to know but in most cases i have not seen anyone giving importance to file name of images getting uploaded to communities, resolution, image size, etc.

its completely Alright if immersion is Not important for discourse and Wont be implementing something similar which i asked the sticky images request But as for the Continue reading button feature request, it really improves first impression, reduces bandwidth for people who view my Project topic for 1st, Makes People to Exit easily without creating drama and whining about Walls of text and also yes reduces server load, Improves performance on slower devices, etc, So would be very awesome to see the continue reading button feature becoming a Reality.

10

In which you were told that you could customize it with CSS, either as an admin or a normal user, and that it wouldn’t be a core thing:

Please respect that not every request everyone makes can be made in to core, for many reasons, and if the team says no then there’s probably a very good reason for it, and you need to respect that.

Which you were also given good reasons not for, because that’s not what discourse is designed to do.

Even then, you were told the request was basically at least being considered:

That’s not what Discourse is designed for, there’s a very good reasons why Discourse doesn’t already have those.

That’s not what the software is designed for, for multiple reasons, at least a few which have been mentioned in this topic, and also in other topics around this forum.

1 Like
11

@Firepup650
I added New Points just so it will be helpful if they work on it someday.

[redacted by mod]
I made a video of Quora’s behavior on handling Walls of text, See the Video, there is 1 reply for this Question which is Really huge…

Continue Reading Button improves the Experience, Also Loading Animations are missing on Quora but discourse can work on it.

As you can see, Quora does not show continue reading button for smaller replies. I think Maybe they have set a character limit like

Answer containing less than 1500 Characters = No Continue Reading Button
More than 1500 Characters = Continue Reading button

Also, it seems like Quora is doing your Lazy loading images so my request is an improvement as Continue reading button implemented on discourse will only loads the image from server after the continue reading button is used.

You can also see that in many Quora answers for this question, there are more than 5 to 6 images being added on most of the answers, So the continue reading button effectively improves the user/reading Experience.

I Failed to add importance for Error Handling and unsure how much time discourse will invest on Error Handling if continue reading feature is worked on BUT ONE THING which needs to be paid attention is Videos, if there are 50 images truncated under continue reading button, i would also be adding some videos to keep the pacing refreshing so if discourse works on continue reading, please also make sure to test videos alongside with images and texts.

Quora displays this subscription prompt for some answers.

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Similar to this behavior, if discourse user uploads more than 300+ images for a topic or a reply where the continue reading button will be appearing automatically after every 50 images gets scrolled, its much wiser to add the following question.

This topic is Longer than usual, What Would you like to do ?

Button A: Load images/videos in Batches(Recommended)

Button B: Load all images/videos(Increases Bandwidth and May Slow down your device).

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12

For the part about replies having a Read More button, IMO it could irritare users if the topic is about a big topic, and many users have long posts on their ideas, but have to keep pressing Read More to view other user’s posts.
I do not mean to be rude, if I sound like it.

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(post deleted by author)

14

What do you mean by topic is about a big topic ? Did you mean subject and the content about the topic being long will end up irritating ? That is the reason why i asked this request and quora has implemented it.

Adding a continue reading button will prevent Everyone from being overwhelmed by lot of images and helps in unlocking the topic only for people who actually wants to reads it based on how they find the topic to be interesting from what they have read in the first 1500 characters or 1st X number of images before continue reading button gets shown…

You Learn the lesson, If you do not like some person’s posts, Register that person in your mind and never click anything made by that person, by avoiding the interference, you can view other people’s posts without having to press read more/continue reading buttons multiple times. In addition, You also have the added Luxury of adding people to Ignore list.

This Innovative Continue Reading Feature will help not just me but for anyone who takes the time to write more than 1500+ characters… Revealing walls of text to everyone easily will decrease People’s commitment to engage and Start Reading.

15

I meant that the topic may be about a controversial subject/subject with many opinions.

I understand, thank you.

1 Like