what about a probationary period of 3 months or 100 posts during which the limit is set lower, so that people learn to be concise, and then lifting the limit once the member has stuck around for a while, seen how the culture of the board works, etc.

If someone has been around for 3 years, and one post out of a hundred is really long, I'm more inclined to read it, since it's probably worth the length.

Don't know if the software has that kind of flex to it.

just my $.02

-sm

Ohh, I love that one. That's exactly what's needed for new posters, to slap them in the face if they spam us, because a lot of them just want to flip a large message out at you and run.

If the feature isn't available, perhaps it could be added?

I've never seen in on a web-based forum, but some mailing lists I've been on actually restrict new subscribers from posting for a few days, or require moderator approval for their postings for a few days. Hey that would be fun... a cellar moderation cabal.

Red Flag
 

Given the nature of the Cellar, the moderation of posts in that manner kinda goes against that nature.

Yep I agree with Syc, the cellar is all about freedom of speech. Otherwise someone would have kicked Radar out shortly after he arrived.

instead of moderating new members, just have them verify their membership with a valid NRA or GOP member ID#

Once that's confirmed, let them flame away. :shotgun:

You have to pan a lot of gravel to find the nuggets.
You have to sift a lot of verbage to find the gems.
Restrictions lead to mediocrity.
Just my opinion.

It looks like 10000 characters is the consensus here. From the SteveDallas piece, that's plenty of space for a longer rant.

As for the first post restriction, there's nothing built in to vBulletin for that, but I've gone through the code and it would be easy to add.

Now I just have to decide whether to go off the vBulletin main path. I've always felt the best way to manage things would be to just run with whatever they come up with and stay pretty generic as a forum. The last thing I want to do is to maintain a set of "Cellar patches" that has to be integrated back into the forum software with any upgrade.

A lot of forum owners go nuts and put in the kitchen sink to customize their stuff, but the people are the difference here.