Prevent the great wall of text (force line breaks, punctuation)

[Alpha1]

Since migrating to xenforo we get a lot more mobile users. One of the downsides of this is that they often post large texts without line breaks or punctuation, which results in unreadable posts.

To solve this I suggest the following functionality:

• If a post has more than X characters and no line breaks, then show an error to the user that they must add line breaks, before the post can be submitted.
• If a post has more than X characters and no punctuation, then show an error to the user that they must add punctuation, before the post can be submitted.

 

[Alpha1]

Nowadays AI can easily check and correct such posts. Instead of the above process, it would make more sense to have an LLM check it and correct it automatically.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Nowadays AI can easily check and correct such posts. Instead of the above process, it would make more sense to have an LLM check it and correct it automatically.

expensive ?

 

[Mr Lucky]

Nowadays AI can easily check and correct such posts. Instead of the above process, it would make more sense to have an LLM check it and correct it automatically.

Although that would work I disagree with the principle. IMO It would be better if people were notified of the issues and learned for themselves how to communicate effectively. Not to mention the environmental impact caused by (unnecessary) use of ai. I vote for the original suggestion - nudge people into doing it for themselves.

 

[Wildcat Media]

Yes, please. Let's keep ai slop and laziness out of our forums. ai needs to die.

Beyond that...yeah, I'd be all for reminding a user to properly format a message, and make it readable. Moderators could manually put posts/threads into moderation and have the user edit or repost properly, but that's more work for the staff, and only makes the member angry. (The more conspiracy minded would say we are "censoring" them.)

 

[JamesBrown]

On my forums, correcting another’s grammar or even mentioning their spelling puts you on notice that the next time you do so, you’ll be banned. I discovered a long time ago that grammar nazis were the biggest barriers to new members posting.

it’s not so common these days as spell checking is baked into most editors, but it’s a delight when you see a newbies question on a forum, strewn with errors, maybe phonetic spelling, or the wrong spelling of simple words. Then to see the poster gets polite, relevant answers with no mention of his prose. This day and age, with so many people who log in with the primary aim of correcting others from a high horse, it’s refreshing.

Yes we would all prefer to read perfectly written posts, but I’d prefer to have poorly written content that we can quietly correct if absolutely necessary, than the tumbleweed forums associated with pedantry loving moderators.

 

[Mr Lucky]

but it’s a delight when you see a newbies question on a forum

You missed the apostrophe. It should be newbie’s.

Or is it newby’s?

 

[JamesBrown]

You missed the apostrophe. It should be newbie’s

i new it wood cum

 

[Wildcat Media]

i new it wood cum

As we joked on our forum about 20 years ago...

"A reel tail of whoa."



In reality, and it applies to the forums I'm involved with (either as admin/staff, or as a visitor), the wall of text issue and gross punctuation/grammar errors rarely happen. I think it goes back to social media and the mentality therein, vs. those who want a serious and/or helpful discussion and join a forum for that reason. These forums I'm part of haven't been prone to the typical grammar slop we see on social media. And in the very rare instance something is egregiously wrong, another member will kindly point it out. Spelling and poor writing skills? We can't fix that.

Having said that, a system that prompted (but not corrected) members about a gross number of errors would be helpful. "Perhaps adding some line breaks to your post would help others read it." Or, "You might consider capitalizing your sentences to make your post readable," only triggered if nearly every sentence wasn't capitalized in a paragraph.

Yet it's curious how some autocorrect systems will capitalize the next letter after punctuation that ends a sentence...yet some still post without capitalizing sentences somehow.