[kaliope]

just curious...why is there an 8 letter minimum for posts?


I play games a lot and most of those posts aren't 8 letters and I frequently forget to put ....after my post and then I get that annoying little screen telling me I need 8 letters which triggers my ptsd because I take it as being yelled at for breaking the rules for not posting right so I wonder why that rule is there in the first place cause it doesn't make sense to me.


so I thought I would ask and maybe if I understood I wouldn't feel like I was getting yelled at.

[unaluna]

My educated but out of date guess is that the software required them to pick a minimum. The size is probably usually more than one character, right? 8 is a considered an "even size" on many computers, like 10 fingers are to humans.

Every forum I've ever been on has an 8 letter minimum. Always seemed odd to me, too.

[unaluna]

Ask a little kid who thinks he or she knows everything about computers, grab a big mug of tea, and let them tell ya! The word they are trying to say is "hexadecimal", or 16.

You know how they ask for passwords to be at least 8 characters long? Thats along the same lines.

Plus, most computers will ask, in these 8 or more characters, are you going to put something, or will you also include nothing? I think its less work if there is always something - then the computer knows that if there is nothing, its a mistake, or maybe the end of the word (thats WORD, not world!).

There is no end of computer info on the web - what youre asking is kind of like, why is the sky blue? Or maybe why are roads flat and wheels round. Youve really hit at the core of the matter (lol thats a very very old computer terminology joke, core).

All forums don't have an eight character minimum. I've seen boards that have 20 character minimums and boards that have no minimum. I post on boards where members frequently put their answer in the title space followed by "NT/DC" which is short for "no text/don't click." Maybe it reduces spam?
You'll need admin to answer that.

[DocJohn]

We require a character minimum because we don't want posts without content (e.g., someone just replies in the subject line). That is consistent with our efforts to be a self-help support community that encourages thoughtful discussion...

As for the exact number itself, it's arbitrary, just a number pulled out of the air.

DocJohn