Quote from: shorena on February 06, 2016, 09:56:11 AM

Quote from: craked5 on February 06, 2016, 09:36:55 AM

Quote from: Lauda on February 05, 2016, 09:56:21 PM

Quote from: craked5 on February 05, 2016, 09:50:18 PM

Quote from: Lauda on February 05, 2016, 08:39:27 PM

Quote from: Newbie

Is Bitcoin really a decentralized currency? How many coins can there be?

-snip-
I believe this answer is more detailed and would probably help more (maybe my explanations are not the best, I'm not an expert ^^).
The main idea is if you create the necessity of the 75 characters, it will reduce spam (cause spamming sig campaign would become more expensive in time) and people would get used to answering in a more detailed way. Which can't be a bad thing in my opinion.

Wrong. Your answer is a straw-man. The newbie did not ask what a decentralized currency was nor how it works. He only asked 'is Bitcoin one'; that's a yes and no question that can be expanded, albeit it would be redundant in this case. Imposing a character limit will not reduce any sort of spam but would rather negatively effect users that contribute by excluding their constructive albeit short posts. Spammers would just re-write more of what others posted to get above the limit (pretty simple actually).

Wouldn't say a straw-man, more like a deduction. He asks if Bitcoin is decentralized. That means he doesn't understand how it works, because if he understood how it works he wouldn't ask if bitcoin is decentralized as it's the obvious consequence of the way it was created.

So you gave him a misleading and wrong answer that might result in more confusion in the future. Bitcoin is not Litecoin and some of the other things you wrote are at the very least misleading if not plain wrong. Its a great example that length does not equal quality.

Quote from: craked5 on February 06, 2016, 09:36:55 AM

Imposing a character is the same thing as putting a captcha before the faucets.

No, it changes the message, a captcha does not.

Quote from: craked5 on February 06, 2016, 09:36:55 AM

It doesn't make it impossible to farm it, but it makes it more costly to farm it in an industrial way.

Key presses are not expensive, valuable, constructive content is. Its expensive because it requires experience and or thought. Pressing buttons in itself does not. All you do is force button pressing.

Quote from: craked5 on February 06, 2016, 09:36:55 AM

And let's face the truth if you take all the messages of less than 75 characters I'm pretty sure 90% of them will be spamming answers. (Though I never did any stats of that it's just an impression :3 )

Maybe, the majority of short answers are already lazy spam and worthless junk, but I dont think a higher number of symbols will change it. If anything it will change the noise to signal ratio to the worse.

Never said that length is similar to quality, that would be stupid of me!
But that a short answer can always be transformed into a longer one and you'll always have a better one. My answer is misleading you find? Maybe it's because I don't understand well the differences between cryptocurrencies or because I lack technical knowledge I don't know, but what's interesting it's that if my answer is more detailed, such incoherences will appear so other users will have the occasion to correct me.
I'll learn something and the user asking the original question will have more elements. It's a win-win for me

And key presses are expensive in time. I'm pretty sure lots of sig spammer posting only 20 characters answers or even less do it only because they want to maximize profit. I find it a good way to counter them is to put a base characters limit.

But you're right in the fact that contrary to captchas it does change the message. I just have the feeling it can't really change it in a bad way and can't think of a situation where it would be. Maybe I also lack imagination Cheesy