Recently, several new users have been making double posts, with other community members replying to remind them that this is not allowed.

In my opinion, we should either reconsider that policy or add a message to the website when you're attempting to make a post soon after the first. I feel like correcting new users for behavior they were never even told not to do, for what appears like no real reason, can be alienating.

I don't think I've encountered anyone who personally dislikes double posting - everyone that I remember mentioning it was reminding people that it's a quasi-rule here, rather than stating that they were personally inconvenienced by it.

If we keep the rule, I think that we should at least add a message that suggests that users edit their previous post if too little time has passed. Perhaps the quick reply bar could be replaced with a box containing something along the lines of, "Posting too soon after your previous post is discouraged. Try editing your previous post instead." along with a button to edit your previous post and one to reply anyways.

Double posting is one of those things that, at least for me personally, feels like it isn't a good thing to do, but when attempting to actually state why I'm at a loss for true consequences.

Is it more concise to use one post? Yeah, but extra long posts aren't that great either. Depends on the degree of reduction.

Do double posts inflate post counts? They can, but it's not like post count displays words-per-post, which is probably a better measure of "productivity" anyway.

Are double posts just attempts to bump threads? They can be, but other times users are just posting as they see fit.

I can obviously think of situations where multiple posting is bad form and should be absolutely discouraged, but the generic policy is far too vague and far too informal to be actually good as it stands.

The answer: It annoys KermPhD when you:

* a) use the edit button to modify a post multiple times after the initial post
* b) post multiple times rather than using the edit button to modify the initial post

Clearly the answer is to just not post anything and use IRC instead for long, drawn out questions. I think he is okay with that.

Obviously, you would ideally post only a single thing once with a complete thought in it, but that's both not always possible and also no longer really relevant once a user has made the "partial" post.


I've also noticed this happening recently - only newcomers seem to be using the forum, outside of project posts and discussions of news or the site itself. The fact that most questions are being asked and answered in IRC leads to answers not really being documented anywhere, resulting in redundant questions. Additionally, it makes it harder to give help, as generally, you don't provide your code when asking a question in IRC.

double posting is bad

double posting is bad

EDIT: I can no longer delete my meemz because someone thought it would be a good idea to only make the last post in the thread deletable.
I think the main problem is that when you submit a post, the page churns the request for at least a few seconds, which is fine, however it makes users (particularly the ones that aren't used to it like new members) feel like they should spam the submit button. For some reason, the site doesn't catch that and the front end doesn't prevent it either.

EDIT2: That's not the kind of double posting that commandz is referring to. In terms of intentional double posting instead of editing the post, I think it really depends, if the 2nd post is posted immediately after the first and offers clarification/more detail on the initial post, then its bad. If its a necro-double-post then I think its fine. And if its a meaningless post that adds nothing to the thread (eg. thanking someone for their answer), then its also bad.

EDIT3: With regards to editing posts multiple times, I have absolutely no problem with that (obviously lol), I do it a lot and generally its either adding additional information or fixing grammar/syntax, which both improve the quality of posts, which I think is the main goal.

Remember that time when Cemetech would just double post for you for no reason randomly.

That's kinda unrelated, but nope, I've never heard of that happening, and it surely isn't still happening right now.

One case in particular I can think of where a rule against making multiple consecutive posts in the same thread causes problems is when needing to quote and respond to multiple people. Unless something has changed recently or I'm missing something obvious, this forum (unlike others I've been on) lacks a UI for conveniently quoting several people at once and then responding to them individually within one post. The forum UI instead encourages making a separate post per quote and response. There have been times before when I've needed to respond to multiple people but considered giving up and not posting simply because of the no-double-post “rule” and the headache of manually pasting and trying to properly mark up quotes by hand.

Click the "quote" button in a post, press ctrl+a / ctrl+c, and paste it into a new post. Repeat for each post.

I agree that it's rather difficult to quote multiple people. It would be neat if there was a button in the actual post editor to quote so that you could insert a quote into an existing reply, rather than only being able to create a new reply or having to manually quote. Perhaps, if this is remotely possible with phpBB, you could even highlight a particular section of the reply and just quote that.
Mostly unrelated, but it would also be convenient if the previous posts section on the reply editor was taller, or just didn't have a scrollbar at all, as currently for some threads you can barely see a single post in it.

I think it's more of a limitation from our version of phpBB. I am familiar with one other forum that allows users to select posts they want to quote and the forum automatically merges consecutive posts by a user.

Personally, I'll double post to delineate between an admin message and a regular user message. If I want to say "Hey, this is a warning", or some other admin message but still want to participate in the discussion, I will double post so that my intentions are clear in each post. I think I've done this action once or twice.

Personally speaking, double posting is a massive gray area.



I think it's a javascript addition? I know reddit does this when you highlight part of a comment and click reply.



I'm going to do a whole lot of talking without a whole lot of knowing, but I'd imagine this is pretty simple? You'd just need to compare the user to the last post of the topic, and if the time is <12 hours then block the (quick) reply. However, it seems like unnecessary work for a very minor issue. It's not like anyone's getting hurt by double posts or padding some statistic for glorious internet points and bragging rights.

I know it would be possible to quote regular text using javascript, but quoting parts of things that use bbcode might not be possible, as the client is only served HTML, not the original bbcode.


Well, in my opinion, if it's not important enough to be mentioned anywhere on the site's rules or on the actual page, it also should not be important enough to correct new users about it. I know that if I were told about some rule for the first time after I had already posted, I would be discouraged slightly from posting in the future for fear of breaking some other rule that's not actually written anywhere.

It's not explicitly a Cemetech rule but editing instead of double posting is a behavior we encourage.

I had actually forgotten about that topic until now, and it looks like a few of those links (especially for the Bug Reports) can be updated.

I like that topic. Maybe it should be added to the homepage or when users register an account.
I think that double posting isn't necessary and it's annoying.

I've noticed that people have been double posting a lot as well, and I agree with what Alex said about the fact that edits would be better. Maybe there could be some "forum rules" section that mentions this.