Extending character limit beyond 99000

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Extending Character Limit Beyond 99000

The current character limit of 99000 is being discussed, with Tim_Jefferies seeking to raise it due to limitations in their private wiki and public forum instances. They’ve encountered issues with the DiscoTOC plugin rendering unusable on long wikis.

sam explained that the limit is somewhat arbitrary and can be raised, but with potential performance consequences. They suggested creating a custom plugin to override the limit, but noted it’s not a common request.

Tim_Jefferies expressed their inability to create the plugin due to a lack of Ruby coding experience. sam recommended hiring a developer for a relatively low cost ($50-$200) to build the plugin, warning against forking the code to avoid long-term risks and potential issues with container hacking and web updates.

1

I realise that for most usage cases this isn’t going to be useful, but I was wondering :

  • Why 99000 specifically? Is it technical limitation?
  • Can we raise that value further as an admin (with a message explaining any consequences)?

I’m running 2 discourse instances, one is a private wiki and the other is a public forum. People have hit this limit in both.
It is possible to seperate the topic post in to seperate replies yes, but its not ideal to do this - and crucially for the wiki renders the DiscoTOC; automatic table of contents plugin unusable (Which is exactly what we need for long wikis).

Finally. Is there a way that I can delve into the docker image and override this setting if it can’t be raised as part of the discourse code?

2

The largest consequence of raising this too high is that cooking markdown can get pretty expensive on enormous documents.

The limit is kind of arbitrary, I do not think anything would explode in fire if you raised it to 200k or 300k in a very controlled environment.

The only clean way to override this line: discourse/config/site_settings.yml at 3610709b6cf859f674a02394f1430bb51f68d117 · discourse/discourse · GitHub is in a custom plugin. The upside is that the plugin is kind of trivial.

I have seen requests once or twice to raise our “max” limit, but it certainly is not a common request.

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3

Unfortunately I have never written a line of ruby code in my life, so I have no idea how to do that. Sys admin stuff easy peasy, but coding leaves me queasy.

4

I reckon someone could build this plugin for you in about 1 hour, so a budget of $50-$200 on Marketplace would land you this change easily.

I strongly don’t recommend forking here for the change this will place your forums at great long term risk, container hacking is going to break web updates.

4 Likes