R.L. Dane    🍵 16h ago

If you really believe in the silly 500 character limit, then why the heck is everyone posting "3/12" continuation threads?

Either the limit is a good idea, and nobody should post multi-part toots, or its a dumb idea, and should be retired (in favor of a ~6k post limit). One or the other. Cut the crap, already.

I'd 100x rather see long posts shortened with a "See more" button than yet another toot that ends with "1/" 🤦🏻‍♂️

Forcing people to create threads just to get their thought across is terrible UX, and I'm tired of being diplomatic about it.

#Mastodon #GoToSocial #GtS #snac #fediverse

Edit: I forgot, it's 500, not 250. I was probably thinking of Twitter, which went from 140 to 280, and now who even knows. XD

Show threadBad Opinion Guy

@rl_dane

If I ever make a post completely devoid of punctuation (and I do sometimes), it's usually because that post was like 508 characters or something :P

3:52pmWeb
Show threadR.L. Dane    🍵 11h ago

@OpenComputeDesign

Man, I remember all kinds of textual gymnastics to get tweets under 140 characters, especially when retweeting, which in the old days consisted of:

  • copying the source tweet's text
  • hitting reply
  • adding "RT: " before the user's handle, then adding a space and pasting the text after the handle
  • finding creative ways to shorten the tweet if it went over 140 characters

That's right, in the early days of #twitter, there were no:

  • threads
  • retweets
  • native hashtags
  • images

...and all link and mentions (@...) text counted against the 140 character limit.

That's what made it a valid creative constraint, to me.