Official Announcement regarding changes to conversations (private messages)

Jacques Skelly said:
Though I will once again bring up the idea of closing conversations not counting, that'd be nice and it still seems like no mods have said anything about that idea. (I could be blind but I haven't noticed anything)
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I can't promise that any changes will be made but we're taking suggestions like these seriously and giving them thought. Its unlikely that we'll discuss them here so as not to give people the wrong idea, but we're certainly looking at options. If its been said, we've seen it.
 
Kelp said:
Its not a punishment, no warnings have been handed out and we're not pointing fingers are individuals either. Its a limitation on a feature that wasn't intended to be used in the way people have been. Most of the active users on the forum are unaffected by this and it is mostly users who we believe to be abusing the feature who have been affected. Though yes, some particularly active users have also been affected.

There are many users who have thousands of posts in their conversation but very few come close to breaching 15,000. I'm still not quite convinced that people are actually realising just how many posts that is yet. That's 750 pages. Most active threads don't reach that amount and even this thread is sitting at nearly 30. Discussion of such magnitude should take place in threads where possible.

Yes, if you're quite social you might have 10 1-on-1 conversations spanning 30 pages each but thats still only 300.
There are conversations both 1-on-1 and groups who have far over 750 pages in them, that's alarming. It becomes moreso of a problem when these post counts dwarf their count on the public forum.
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A limitation because someone is using it wrong seems awfully close to the definition of a punishment...
 
Kelp said:
It becomes moreso of a problem when these post counts dwarf their count on the public forum.
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I mean, the bulk of my 100,000 posts are from several 16-user convos I was in with users who were more talkative than me, so I doubt my actual conversation message count would really be much larger than my regular message count, but at least the 5-user limit kind of fixes that...
 
Eye Of Cthulhu 🌳 said:
A limitation because someone is using it wrong seems awfully close to the definition of a punishment...
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If a road did not have speed limit signs and then some were added because some cars were going above the limit, is it a punishment?

That is the clearest example I can think of. Limitations are indeed often part of punishment but they are not one in the same, context is the defining aspect.
It would be a punishment if we gave warnings, probations or individual limits to those we believed to be abusing the system.
 
Kelp said:
If a road did not have speed limit signs and then some were added because some cars were going above the limit, is it a punishment?

That is the clearest example I can think of. Limitations are indeed often part of punishment but they are not one in the same, context is the defining aspect.
It would be a punishment if we gave warnings, probations or individual limits to those we believed to be abusing the system.
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Fair enough
 
Chir' said:
So I don't know if this has been answered (or asked) yet, but why exactly do OTHER people's posts count towards the limit of people who simply are in the convo?
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Orchamut said:
It would be kind of nice if the post limit only counted your own posts (because if my convo posts were over 15,000 then I'd be concerned) but that probably wouldn't help a lot of people.
Edit: ninja'd.
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We don't have the ability to do that, unfortunately. We only have a very few options we can change in regards to conversations, and limiting an individual's total convo messages is not one of them. We worked with what we had to work with, tested it rigorously with test accounts to see what happens when someone reaches or goes over the limit. and discussed our plans for weeks. We reviewed as much data as we could to determine how many would be affect, and how best to reach a reasonable solution. For better or worse, this is where we came to at the end.

I would say that the total number of accounts that are affected at all (by being close to or over the limit) is less than 50. If you put all the convo data we have access to and put it in a statistical graph, the affected group is 4-5 standard deviations from the mean, at the very least. Only the outliers of the outliers would notice any change at all.

We had no doubt that some people wouldn't like this change, and that some would be rather angry. None of the responses here are very surprising to us. If we had given a heads up beforehand, the same group of people would have been just as mad and upset and probably made the same arguments, accusations and vague threats, and we'd be here in the same place.

As I said earlier in this thread - this site and forum belong to Re-Logic, and it is the face of their business. They generously provide use of the forum for fans to talk about the game along with other things, but at the end of the day it's a forum for the Terraria community., to share their thoughts and suggestions with the developers. If a very small group of people instead use a feature of the forum to run massive group chats, or to archive stuff they don't feel like putting elsewhere, all out of sight of the owners. then we are rightfully concerned. It can potentially cause a liability for Re-Logic to be hosting content that is unseen and un-moderated.

At this point, we feel that this change will stand for the time being. We can always revisit it later. We really do appreciate the feedback, even though some of you feel that we don't.
 
Kelp said:
Its not a punishment, no warnings have been handed out and we're not pointing fingers are individuals either. Its a limitation on a feature that wasn't intended to be used in the way people have been. Most of the active users on the forum are unaffected by this and it is mostly users who we believe to be abusing the feature who have been affected. Though yes, some particularly active users have also been affected.

There are many users who have thousands of posts in their conversation but very few come close to breaching 15,000. I'm still not quite convinced that people are actually realising just how many posts that is yet. That's 750 pages. Most active threads don't reach that amount and even this thread is sitting at nearly 30. Discussion of such magnitude should take place in threads where possible.

Yes, if you're quite social you might have 10 1-on-1 conversations spanning 30 pages each but thats still only 300.
There are conversations both 1-on-1 and groups who have far over 750 pages in them, that's alarming. It becomes moreso of a problem when these post counts dwarf their count on the public forum.
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yeah i'm coming back to this issue after some rest and i can see why the limit's at what it's at
i only have like 1300 posts but i have nearly 50k messages and honestly even i'm surprised about that
but something i think i noticed is that ALL messages in a convo contribute to YOUR message count. is that correct?
if so that would explain a lot

edit: just read the above posts, sigh
 
Dear fellow members and dear moderators and developers of the Terraria Community Forums,

I hope you are feeling great. After a week of absence I have returned to the TCF since it is Friday. I have seen the PM limit thread today and took a look at the discussion in the thread to understand the main gist. Also I have seen Redigit's statement regarding the respect towards the mods. Due to the length of my reply I decided to reply here on the PM limit thread. If you think that a different place suits my reply more, do not hesitate of letting me know.

I do not understand why people jump on the mods. The mods are normal persons with a real life outside the TCF. I do not support critisizing the personality of the mods for a change they did on the TCF. The mods are great people. They help to keep the forums friendly. Even whenever you do mistakes they are very happy to always explain you what happened. This also helps to grow yourself as a person. I experienced that if you are being to the mods and members of the forums nice that the mods are nice to you.

The mods help on the forums so that the devs can focus more on the upcoming great 1.4.5 update, which we are all waiting for. Since the devs are less occupied to keep the forum clean, they can concentrate more on developing. This will even more improve the Terraria gameplay when the 1.4.5 update gets released. A positive side effect is that the Terraria game has less bugs and that found bugs are fixed faster. Also what I like is that the forums just like the Terraria game have no ad spam which is a big contribution to a good user experience. An additional point is that here you are accepted the way you are as long as you do not do mischief.

People are respecting if a person has for example real life tasks that hinder them to visit the forum every day and here you do not get treated badly for being a different person. For example due to university I come to the TCF only every Friday and there were no texts like "You (profanity), go to the TCF more often" and no spam pings or the like. This respect shall also carry over to the mods who use not a small portion of their free time to voluntarily moderate the forums. It shall be respected that they cannot be 24/7 on the forums to hear you always instantly.

The moderator's support when needed is a point I am thankful for, along with other points of the TCF like the easy usability and ad freeness. While some may be inconvenieced by the PM limit change, I am thankful that nothing other gets affected in the TCF, e. g. that the TCF is ad free and that RPs are not blocked. It has been scientifically proved that you should focus more on the 99% positive aspects rather than the 1% negative aspects in order to reduce stress.

About the PMs and how I use them. I use them mainly in three scenarios. Firstly I use the PMs if I need to contact staff. Secondly I talk to members via PM if I want to reply to a user in a thread but I fear that my reply would disrupt the thread. Thirdly if I see a member stating they have serious distress, I ask them if I can PM them. If they agree to a PM, I ask them questions like how their life is going and similar.

I hope that all the members of the TCF continue to be respectful to others, no matter if to a mod or not to a mod and no matter if on the TCF, other places of the internet or in real life. Being respectful here to everyone is along other aspects also expressing your patience in awaiting the 1.4.5 update.

I wish you a nice day

Glasia🌳
 
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