Don't count the spoiler wrapper towards the min post length requirement

AI-generated summary

A discussion is underway about a potential inconsistency in the min post length setting on Discourse forums. alexs pointed out that users can bypass the minimum post length by adding an empty [spoiler][/spoiler] wrapper to their posts. jomaxro noted that there are many ways to exploit this setting, and it’s up to site moderators to intervene in cases of abuse. alexs acknowledged this, and jomaxro confirmed that this is the current stance on the issue. vinothkannans shared a link to a relevant post by Sam, which discusses users bypassing the 10-character rule.

I’m not sure whether this should be considered a bug but it’s inconsistent so..

At the moment, users can add [spoiler][/spoiler] (with no hidden text) to their posts in order to bypass the min post length that’s been set for a site - & our users are doing this.

Characters from quotes of other posts aren’t counted towards the post’s length so this seems inconsistent.

e.g.

There are lots of creative ways to exploit the min post length setting, I believe @sam has said we’re not going to be able to stop them all.

There are & I can see his point :slight_smile: it would be helpful to get rid of this one but I guess what you’re saying is that it’s down to the site’s moderators to intervene if it’s being abused, which is fair enough.

You’ll need to wait for Sam or another engineer to confirm, but yes, I believe that’s what our current position is on this.

Here is the Sam’s post

https://meta.discourse.org/t/users-bypassing-the-10-character-rule/35257/2?u=vinothkannans