Yes, in my opinion the rule is basically necessary. A bit harsh in some cases, but all blanket rules have issues.

David Bjur:
EDIT: And if it is good, what should we do to prevent smug idiots?

Ignore or ridicule them.
Sure, the wall'o'text may look like a particularly self-indulgent LiveJournal entry... but if it's on-topic and that long, it took enough effort to stand without official reprimand. That's when it becomes the community's job to cherry-pick and refute... or just flat-out ignore, in some cases.

tippy2k2:

Skin:
The rule is not a problem. The moderators who can't take anything into context are the problem. Sometimes a thread or response elicits only a very short reply and adding more unto the post is actually the low content part.

Could you give any examples of these threads that only require a one word response? If you can answer the thread in one answer, either you are not putting enough thought into your answer or the thread itself doesn't have enough of a discussion value to warrant existence.

Even the example given earlier (post your favorite song), you can state WHY it's your favorite song, what does it mean to you, etc.

I have received one warning so far, for this post:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.291469-The-most-underrated-video-game-ever#11579733

Now I did just name one game, so maybe it does deserve a warning, but:

1) Other posters name multiple games, say nothing else and escape mod wrath. Mine and post #10 receive warnings for naming just one game. Post #21 just names two games, adding exactly what we did, and receives no warning. Really the mods should have decided whether just naming games was acceptable or not and warned us all if they weren't.

2) A lot of people are just adding extra words to evade mod wrath that don't add to the discussion. And they get away with it. eg post #27

Bobbity:
Jade Empire. It was a fantastic game, but it seemed almost like no one at all noticed it. :S

That he thought Jade Empire was fantastic and unnoticed ought to be obvious by the fact that he named it at all in a thread about underrated games. So really there isn't any meaningful content beyond "Jade Empire".

Overall I think the rule is a good one, but care must be taken with its' enforcement. Good writing involves condensing what you have written. Punishing posters for low word count posts will discourage condensing and encourage the opposite, artificial lengthening. Mods should try to be word count neutral, and neither punish for short but interesting, nor let people get away with meaningless padding.

TopazFusion:
One thing I find particularly annoying about other forums is the huge number of "this" and "+1" quote replies.

Perhaps these people could be put to use. Give us a "this +1" button and allow posts to be viewed in order of +1s received. That should reward good writing. It doesn't work terribly well on Youtube comments, but I think that's because you can only post about a paragraph, so quality debate would never happen.

TestECull:
I think it's absolute bullshit. Sometimes a short reply is all that is required. For example, if someone asks, say, "What game was Niko Bellic in?", you need not say more than simply "GTA IV". But, because of the no low content rule, you have to fill the post out with addtional bullshit, lest answering the OP's question get you a strike.

It needs to go. replace it with a "Don't spam" rule, which AFAIK we already have. Let low-content but helpful posts slide, smack around those who do dumb "FIRST" shit, we all win.

Lets be fair, if anyone posted that topic/question, every response would be this.

OT: It serves it's purpose to an extent, however I do occasionally see short posts that add something to the discussion get warnings.

Unfortunately no examples spring to mind, but if I think of any I'll let you know. Generally it's when someone says a few words and posts a picture/video.

An upper max wouldn't hurt either honestly. The longer a post gets the less likely it is to be read.

I'd love to see a day of twitter rules Escapist, every post has to be 150 chars or less.

I really hate posts that are just "yes," "This," "+1," etc.

I think it's a decent rule. If you don't have something worth more than a couple words, don't say it.

I believe it does some good. It's nice not to wade through worthless posts that add nothing, but then again, people can post (and do often) entire pages and say nothing worth while. So, it's hard to weed out all the pointless posts, but at least we don't have to deal with all of them, just some of them.

It's a rule worth keeping.

Well most of the time its a good thing, but sometimes a response does not require many words and that sometimes wrongly gets hit with a low content. But thats pretty rare.

tippy2k2:

Hazy992:

tippy2k2:

Could you give any examples of this? I can't think of any situation where my post of "Yes" is enough that there is no more that needs to be said. The only situation right now I can think of is if a troll is throwing something so blatantly offensive out that you don't need more but then, why are you posting? Report his ass and move on.

Well I don't remember the exact thread but I posted something and a user responded with 'Yeah I agree'. He/she probably felt that there was nothing more to add and just wanted to share my sentiment. But because of low content warnings they started talking about cake or something, which was nothing to do with the thread. This doesn't happen often but it does happen.

If they had absolutely nothing else to add, then there's no point for them to add anything else; they didn't need to post. You could argue that it shouldn't be the case but the Escapist has made how it feels about it pretty clear.

Slightly off-topic but I'm surprised that people think that adding "Yes, also here is some extra text because I don't want to get Mod wrath" does anything. It won't be auto-flagged but if someone reports it, you still get a warning (as you should based on the rules here).

arguably, this post is useless though, because you've already stated your point and now I had to read it again to maintain the flow of the conversation.

Personally, I think I hate the rule more than I like it. When the posts are useless +1s or "this" I can read them as I scroll past them. There's been too often where I want to just simply state something, but then I have to make a chore of posting. If some one actually gives a damn about what I think, then they can quote me and ask for more info. I've also had far more intimate conversations on other forums where I am allowed to make short or ironic statements because there is no punishment for doing so. It's always business here and never anyone to make friends with.

Gennadios:
An upper max wouldn't hurt either honestly. The longer a post gets the less likely it is to be read.

I'd love to see a day of twitter rules Escapist, every post has to be 150 chars or less.

I just pasted your post into the Youtube comment box. It's 190 characters long.

I don't think an upper max would help, and that's not because I just posted a big one. Sometimes you need a lot of words to say something. And while I admit I don't always read them, I try to skim them for the general gist of what they're saying.

thaluikhain:

Jonluw:
Yes. _{Sure, it's slightly annoying in discussions where you could give a sufficient (and funnier) answer with just a single picture or video, but I believe that's a price we'll have to pay to keep discussion quality aloft.
One word replies are really useless. If we just wanted to know how many people held a certain opinion, we'd use a poll. The forum is intended for discussing the reasons behind your reply, not so much your reply itself.}

Just to let you know, I did the same thing once.

I have one warning on my bar.

These two things are not unrelated.

But, no, I don't think it's that useful. Sometimes psots are just concise...I could certainly blather on about nothing and aoid a low content warning without actually having any content to speak of.

You see this is the thing, the mods should ave enough sense to distinguish between what is a legitimate post and what is an offensive/troll post that needs moderating against.

Evidently the owners of the forums don't trust them with this level of intelligence and whack in some arbitrary rules that they're forced to follow. - but then so are all of you seeing as you signed the terms of user agreement. So meh.

You know, I was just thinking it might be nice to have a +1 or "this" button that just marks under a post who agreed with the poster. It doesn't have to change anything other than just seeing how many other posters agree with a post. There's been plenty of times I've reached for the "report" button not because a post was offensive, but I just wanted something to click to show my approval of the post. Good thing for those posters that I didn't actually click anything. All I'd like to see is all our posts look kinda like how I'm ending this one.

+1s[Bad Jim],[El Dwarfio],[TestECull]

Erana:
The Escapist just has a different purpose than most forums; here, the point is to contribute to genuine discussions, rather than to just be a collection of shouting people. I love the Escapist for its low content post rule because it tangibly illustrates its ideals for the community. I wouldn't have it any other way.

And not to say, "GTFO," but the Escapist is moderated in a way to maintain a specific kind of environment here. While the culture has evolved, this still stands in contrast to other online communities which generally are a beautiful and terrible, writhing social mass.
If its not your thing, go to somewhere that is more along your lines of interest, or only come here when you're looking for this particular type of user generated ramblings. That's a big part of what the mods try to uphold here, after all- a place where you can come and discuss regardless of social politics or post count.

I want to hug your answer, it was just what I wanted to say, just with a better vocabulary!

TopazFusion:

TestECull:
I think it's absolute bullshit. Sometimes a short reply is all that is required. For example, if someone asks, say, "What game was Niko Bellic in?", you need not say more than simply "GTA IV".

Well, in this example, you could answer "Niko Bellic was in GTA IV.", and that would be acceptable.
As a general rule, phrasing a reply into a sentence will usually get around the low content post rule.

If rephrasing an answer without adding any content is acceptable, the original answer should be acceptable. It is a better answer, saying the same with fewer words.

I'm glad the Low content rule is there, but I'm pretty sure it's effectiveness depends on mods actually seeing the low content posts and taking action.

Low word count does NOT equal low content. People seem to be mistaking that here. There is no rule saying that every post has to be at least 200 words, it just says make your post relevant and contribute to discussion. Posting LOL or quoting someone and saying ^This^ does not contribute to discussion.

Jonluw:
Yes. _{Sure, it's slightly annoying in discussions where you could give a sufficient (and funnier) answer with just a single picture or video, but I believe that's a price we'll have to pay to keep discussion quality aloft.
One word replies are really useless. If we just wanted to know how many people held a certain opinion, we'd use a poll. The forum is intended for discussing the reasons behind your reply, not so much your reply itself.}

Oh, I see what you didn't do there.

Shock and Awe:
Well most of the time its a good thing, but sometimes a response does not require many words and that sometimes wrongly gets hit with a low content. But thats pretty rare.

This, basically. I agree that people should be punished for just posting something like "lol", but the rule seems a bit strict at times.

Fortunately I'm not one for low content posts, but I have to admit I do have some small fear that I'll forget about the low content rule (I frequent a lot of different forums, and it's a pretty unique role).

Jonluw:
Yes. _{Sure, it's slightly annoying in discussions where you could give a sufficient (and funnier) answer with just a single picture or video, but I believe that's a price we'll have to pay to keep discussion quality aloft.
One word replies are really useless. If we just wanted to know how many people held a certain opinion, we'd use a poll. The forum is intended for discussing the reasons behind your reply, not so much your reply itself.}

Meta response is meta.
Toombs approves +4

Estoki:
Considering you can avoid the low content rule by writing about the low content rule, no.

Well, except for something I saw earlier:

Some dude in response to some thread:
Yes. Extra words to avoid mod wrath.

Mod Edit: Saying "extra words to avoid mod wrath" does not help avoid mod wrath.
Some Dude was banned for posting in Some Thread

^{NOTE: the guy was banned because he was on his last strike when he made the post}

My opinion: the Low Content Rule is a good one, but I wish that Moderators were a bit more consistent about when they will or will not rain their wrath upon forum goers. But that's just my view.

I'd say it's pretty good, keeps stupid one word comments from being posted and if you can't elaborate on your topic enough to get past the LCR then it probably doesn't matter much. As for encouraging huge posts I don't really see how it does that. It doesn't take much to get past the LCR and some people just think everyone should read their 500 word essay on whatever.

EDIT: I just noticed that both time my post says "To get past the LCR" they line up perfectly. Weird.

It's a very important rule that keeps conversation going in these forums. I don't think that we all just go to the forums to see a long list of yes/no answers.

SmashLovesTitanQuest:
Yes, because it stops those fuckwads from quoting someone and just typing "this". Motherfucker, what the hell. Why the fuck did you even post. You obviously have nothing to say, just shut the fuck up and come back when you have something proper to contribute. That shit is irritating as fuck.

You are correct, but if there's one thing worse than "this" it's "I'll just leave this here". Also, why the wanton profanity?

Yes, to a VERY limited extent.

Obviously just "lol" and "+1" posts are stupid but the mods go too far with the rule. For example let's say I just have a captioned image as my post. Why should that count as a low content post? (And it HAS been counted as such before.)

I also hate restrictions to freedom of speech in any way so in the end, I am against it.

I think that it's good, but think that there should be some exceptions.

For example, pictures/videos shouldn't require text. Sometimes a poster is required to sacrifice humor by throwing in extra words when the picture/video by itself would suffice. Or, hell, even a single word would be sufficient at times.

Regnes:
I think the issue is more about moderators having proper judgement to decide what is ok and what isn't. 15 years of posting experience has brought me to the conclusion that most people who become moderators tend to be tools, but that can hardly be helped. I'm not usually one to make those sorts of posts, so it's not a bother to me.

The moderators on this site are particularly funny. You can watch one forum where a person is throwing names and insults around for about two days before a moderator does anything about it but if you say something positive about piracy you are going to get slapped with the mod stick within an hour.

It is also really funny when they wont censor someone for calling one group names but if someone calls another group that the mods like more names they will get hit with a stick.

Not really, no.