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Re: "Please limit your message to 500 characters"

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On Thu, 14 Jan 2016, Sylvia Else wrote:

> And you waited until I tried to submit it before telling me this because....?
>
> Why the limit anyway? If the required detail dictates a longer message, then 
> that's what's needed. If I omit details because they won't fit, you'll have 
> to contact me to get them.
>
> My cynical nature makes me suspect the limit's there for no better reason 
> than that your developer doesn't know how to handle arbitrary length data.
>
It's to put you in your place.

"This is my space, I get to spout off as much as I want, but you, the 
reader, only gets to put in a comment that's not much longer than "Me 
too".

I've certainly noticed this with blog postings.  SOmeone gets it wrong, 
and there isn't enough space to write a proper answer.  Editing can remove 
important points.

But I think it's happened with those surveys that stores have on their 
cash register slips, go to a URL and fill out the survey.  They offer a 
prize, so I tend to fill them out, but every so often, I actually have an 
important comment to make.  And usually I'm thwarted by the limited space 
for a response.

It may even have come up when making a complaint to a business, and if it 
did, it was one of those ones that didn't have email, so you had to use a 
form, and I could show the sequence of interactions that never changed 
despite 9 months going by and me still not getting that item I ordered 
(and paid for) months before.  It makes sense to include any sequences 
like that, yet the limit doesn't allow it.

The Ottawa Freenet has a web forum, and one time someone linked to an 
article about something (which is one way to be verbose without saying 
anything), and it turned out replies were limited to some small number of 
characters.  So the first poster gets to say something without saying 
anything (he certainly didn't put the article into his own words), yet a 
sincere response when I've given more thought to it than just reading an 
article is not allowed?

But we are used to an egalitarian space here in usenet, we say 
what we want.  The web shifted that, to someone owning the space, and we just get 
to comment at their whim. People set themselves up as some authority, or 
hope to be so, and one way is by flashing a badge and then keeping the 
responses to very brief.

It's the online equivalent of a talk radio show, where the host keeps 
spouting off, and then when there's a caller, cuts them off and gives 
another speech and then says "we have to go to another caller" (or 
commercial) rather than give the caller a chance to say more.  And 
inevitably, there isn't another caller, or commercial, the host keeps 
repeating the subject of the discussion and giving out the phone number, 
hoping someone will call, yet forgetting that they didnt' have a proper 
conversation with the one who had called.

   Michael

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Thread

"Please limit your message to 500 characters" Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> - 2016-01-14 11:36 +1100
  Re: "Please limit your message to 500 characters" Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2016-01-14 00:57 +0000
  Re: "Please limit your message to 500 characters" BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2016-01-14 01:33 +0000
    Re: "Please limit your message to 500 characters" Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2016-01-14 02:30 +0000
      Re: "Please limit your message to 500 characters" Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2016-01-17 16:39 +0100
        Re: "Please limit your message to 500 characters" Kees Nuyt <k.nuyt@nospam.demon.nl> - 2016-01-18 01:20 +0100
  Re: "Please limit your message to 500 characters" Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2016-01-13 21:12 -0500
  Re: "Please limit your message to 500 characters" scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2016-01-21 17:59 +0000
    Re: "Please limit your message to 500 characters" Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> - 2016-01-22 11:13 +1100
      Re: "Please limit your message to 500 characters" Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2016-01-22 00:47 +0000
        Re: "Please limit your message to 500 characters" Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> - 2016-01-22 13:54 +1100
        Re: "Please limit your message to 500 characters" Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2016-01-22 23:02 +0000
          Re: "Please limit your message to 500 characters" Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2016-01-29 10:22 +0100

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