[HPFGU-Feedback] Re: [HPforGrownups] Re: Q's Harry's blood & Voldemor

[Jordan Abel]

> SSSusan:
> Nope, there is no policy which says a member should ask one question only.
> Not at all.  And as Random points out, especially *within* one thread, the
> preference is for combined responses, rather than a bunch of individual
> responses.  I can understand what your'e saying, Random, about the length of
> some combined responses,

Random832:
I'm not sure you do. I'm not saying that combined responses are _bad_
because they're long, i'm saying they're _no improvement_. And that
effectively preventing someone from continuing to respond to the
replies that are made to their own messages needlessly limits the pace
of debate for no real benefit.

>but I know that when I read, I *much* prefer to find a synthesis of
arguments to that point, with responses to several posts if
applicable, than to find 4 or 5 short posts in a row by the same
poster, all addressing the same topic.  IOW, I find it much nicer to
read the entire gist of a position, with countering positions &
responses, in one place.

> Um... can you say more, Random, about the "rarely-enforced" 5-post limit??

I've never heard of anyone who wasn't on moderation getting called on
it. The fact that someone thought that the questions should have been
split up into individual message further tells me that it's an
_unfamiliar_ policy - that is, people don't know about it to nearly
the same degree they know about quoting rules, signatures, and all
that.

------

In general, if the issue is that people are saying the same thing over
and over in response to many different posts (i've been guilty of this
- not here, but on usenet, honestly, particularly in larger threads)
then why not have the rule be that we should try to make sure each
post adds something new, rather than a hard limit that has nothing to
do with the original problem?

And what if someone wants to post responses to five (or more)
different threads? Combining posts becomes a problem there because a
message can only be in one thread, and can only have one subject (the
occasional "reply to two dozen different things" type message when
someone's been gone for a while is fine, but I certainly wouldn't like
to see it become the norm)

Personally, I do reply to multiple messages [always within a thread or
a few closely related threads] in one, when it makes sense to, and
i'll hold off on things like one-liners or
semi-not-really-but-almost-off-topic things until i've got something
more substantial to go with it, but I make no effort to limit my posts
to any particular number and i've never been called on it - that's
what I meant by 'rarely enforced' - the only time I was ever called on
it was when I was still on moderation AND the post in question also
needed editing due to quoting issues. I'd at least like to think that
the reason i've never been called on it is because the posts still
_work_ - they're not ten of the same reply to ten different messages,
they're not one-liners, etc.

Would it really be a problem if he were to have asked the three
questions in three separate posts, been answered, and then in each of
those threads posted to ask for clarification if needed etc (six in
total) all in the same day? What if he'd had four questions (eight
posts)?

I think that the five-post-per-day limit is a solution to the wrong
problem - even more so now that it's been more clearly explained to me
what the real problem is

-- 
Random832