I don't think you can say a certain amount of letters equals constructive. You could write multiple paragraphs and it could be of zero use.
Yet you might be able to solve a problem in one sentence. Unlikely most will take more then one line to help, but it could happen in right idea.
If you read meta though you will see Mods have done a good job with the worst offenders. And most of those the person in charge of signature would have noticed.
Maybe but i noticed to the newbies they will right a simple sentence so that they can joined in discussion and you said that letters cant equals to constructive post. Theres a sentences that have a many words or letters but if you understand and elaborate it the meaning of that sentence is equal only in one sentence of a constructive post.
I agree it is few things that such a small post can be constructive. Lets say a C1 that has slowed down, you might just say "Power off the PSU and after a few mintues power on".
That is 40 characters but could potentially solve a problem. Most problems will take more to be constructive. But you cannot judge it based on number of symbols.
I posted about this exact topic a while ago
here:
I posted about this topic a few months ago and the responses I got were pretty interesting:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/question-about-signature-campaigns-definition-of-a-constructive-post-677129Bitmixer.io automatically excludes posts that are under 75 characters in length although I believe it is the only one out there that has such a restriction. For any particular post, length is a poor-to-average indicator of constructiveness. For example,
here is a post I made that was very short but reasonably constructive. The OP complained about the newbie posting limits and believed that their posts were getting discarded by the forum software. I was the first to reply that that this was not in fact true and showed them how to retrieve their posts by accessing the draft feature.
Post length becomes a better indicator of constructiveness once it is applied to posting history. Those with entire post histories that consist of short one or two sentence replies are highly likely to have their posts classed as unconstructive while the opposite is true for those who have a history of making lengthier posts.
As for some examples of highly constructive posts,
here is one and
here is another. Note that these posts manage to be constructive without being overly long.
For an automated solution, post length is probably the only realistic measure of constructiveness that we have today since machines currently lack the intelligence to classify posts based on their semantics and context within the overall thread.
While it might be more time-consuming for signature campaigns than the current system we have now, some form of automated method like the one Bitmixer.io currently uses combined with a manual method that roughly scans through users' posting histories and paying users in proportion to the constructiveness of their posts should be encouraged in my opinion - i.e. make lots of constructive posts and you will get paid more and spam the forums with one line posts that simply parrot whatever previous posts said and you will get paid less. Not only would the advertiser benefit but the system should, at least in theory, increase the average quality of posts across the board since it would provide an incentive for users to create higher quality posts.
Basically, short posts can be constructive and long posts can be unconstructive (although the latter is more rare) but generally speaking, longer posts are more likely to be constructive than shorter posts when everything else is considered. To be able to accurately sort posts as being constructive or not requires someone to manually read each and every post as well as the whole thread that the post was made in to ensure that the post actually contributes to the discussion rather than parroting what somebody else has already said or talking about something completely unrelated to and disconnected with the discussion at hand.
Of course, signature campaigns run on right budgets and tend to have dozens of members making dozens of posts per week so only rough checks are possible and anything more specific than this would be impractical. Creating a character limit such as the way Bitmixer currently does works "well enough" that it's a reasonable option. Some highly constructive but short posts as well as a few unconstructive but long posts will inevitably fall through the gaps but given that most posters make hundreds of posts over the span of weeks or months, these "outlier posts" shouldn't really be a major concern.
