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I will have been at Stack Overflow for three years this summer. Although I have mostly stopped answering questions long ago, I still rake in the occasional piece of rep, and have thus amassed >60k, most of it in this one tag, where, in over a year of me slacking, they still haven't managed to push me off the list of the top 20 users. (Suckers, the bunch of them!) I am a trusted user thrice over, a mere step below a moderator, I can edit just about anything on the site, and with the click of my forefinger cast a third of the necessary power to atomize (or rematerialize) any question or answer given by anyone.

I have been in the chat since >2.5 years. I am one of the owners of one of the most popular rooms, where all of the most frequent users are >10k (half of them 50k or above), and I have my share in the room having developed its own FAQ and wiki, and a whole set of memes and idiosyncrasies.

Yet, when I need to split a message in the chat because it gets too long (I know you wouldn't have guessed, but I am a bit long-winded sometimes), cut out the second half, hit enter, paste it back, and hit enter again, the chat server greets me with "you can try this action in ... seconds", and requires me to grab the mouse to click on "retry", by which time someone else will have sneaked in a dumb technical message, interrupting my beautifully crafted, witty, universally applicable, and most philosophic statement—very likely with some stupid template meta-programming bullshit.

Incredible as it may seem to the praised creators of the chat (Long may they live!), but I really resent that.

What is that "feature" good for for, actually? Do you think it likely that, after almost three years on Stack Overflow, I am about to script up a bot that dumps an endless stream of spam into the chat? Or do you really think I can type fast enough to prevent everyone else from slipping a message in once in a while, thereby bringing the chat server to a grinding halt under the sheer weight of my voluptuously opulent thoughts?

You know, I kind of can see the point in not letting everyone roam totally freely when you have almost 7k users who can flood the chat with anything they want to (until they are flagged and caught, that is). But the <1000 trusted users? Really, where is the point in preventing them from committing several chat messages in under one second once in a while?

Note: Since this is threatening to go the way Konrad's request went and become buried under tons of Is-it-Friday-yet-in-Iceland postings and the proverbial unicorn wankery, I removed and added instead. To be absolutely clear, here is my feature request spelled out plainly:

I want that built-in brake removed for 10k, or, at the very least, 20k, users, or, at the very least, slackened, so that they can post more messages in short succession.

And I would love to see that tag on this question rather soon.

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  • 21
    +1 for atomize any question
    – Oded
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 9:39
  • 1
    I must admit I'm surprised I joined SO before you did (my 3rd anniversary was just yesterday). I'd always thought you were one of those beta guys.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 9:55
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    +!, ever thought about writing a book? I like your style. Irony mixed with the innocence of frustration.
    – Toon Krijthe
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 9:55
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    @BoltClock: No, I didn't bother with beta. I thought I'd let the proverbial early adopters iron out the worst of the wrinkles before I join. Unfortunately, that strategy mostly failed. :(
    – sbi
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 9:59
  • 14
    @Bart, capital 1.
    – Toon Krijthe
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 9:59
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    @Gamecat: Thanks for the praise, but I think I am not the book author kind of person. It takes quite some frustration to squeeze that kind of irony out of me (I had a gripe with this for at least a year, until I finally went through the roof today), this never lasts long, and nobody wants to read a whole book of frustrated rants.
    – sbi
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 10:24
  • 4
    This is representative of the gap between hi-rep users and moderators (see all the way to the right).
    – casperOne
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 12:45
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    @BoltClock'saUnicorn sbi, beta? He’s alpha as f*ck!
    – Konrad Rudolph
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 13:35
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    @casperOne: The real problem with Konrad's question is that it has a score of 21 (with not a single downvote) and a lot of positive comments, but one answer by Jeff, denying the request, with a score of -10 (and counting, with not a single upvote) and a lot of negative comments — but no action was ever taken on the issue, it wasn't even closed as "STFU, we do it this way no matter how loud you complain". It's now sitting around there as a bait for any other discussion on a similar topic to get closed as a dupe of, thereby very effectively and very infinitely stalling the discussion.
    – sbi
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 13:49
  • 4
    @sbi Just a note about where Jeff posts: if it doesn't have a status-declined then it's not official. Jeff's post in that matter is his thoughts/opinion on it, and while it more often than not carries great weight (in this case, it obviously doesn't), if it hasn't been tagged officially as declined, then the feature request is still up there. That said, I'm almost inclined to close that question as a dupe of this, as this has a more positive spin on it (we could merge Jeff's answer into this as well if we really wanted to).
    – casperOne
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 13:51
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    @casperOne I prefer sbi’s wording over mine. This is annoying as hell, I don’t feel a “positive spin” is appropriate any longer.
    – Konrad Rudolph
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 14:02
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    thinking about re-posting this question at Tavern - just to test for how much parts one would have to split it to
    – gnat
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 14:07
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    Even moderators are rate-limited in chat, so this isn't just a symptom of the divide between trusted users and diamonds. Very annoying, as I am apparently rather long-winded myself.
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 18:50
  • 2
    @TheEstablishment: I wasn't trying to get closer to be a moderator, I was merely pointing out that I am trusted to not to wreak havoc on SO proper, the site's main display, despite incredibly power to do just that was handed to me, but OTOH I am not trusted to post more than one message per second in the chat, which almost no amount of googling will ever bring some SO newbie to. This just doesn't make much sense.
    – sbi
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 20:17
  • 7
    Yay for the [status-review] tag, @balpha!
    – sbi
    Commented Aug 3, 2012 at 20:10

7 Answers 7

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+200

Like the limit of links for first-posters on Skeptics, this is an entirely made-up problem.

Even if a benefit existed because this were a real problem (and in my opinion nobody has made this plausible), it is massively overshadowed by the downsides.

Here’s a heretical thought: how about switching off the flood control completely and see if the world ends?

I know what my prediction is. Spoiler: it is less dramatic than Nostradamus’.

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  • 6
    Nostradamus probably wasn't too dramatic. It was being interpreted in dramatic ways because of fear. Oh wait
    – sehe
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 13:48
71

Yeah, this annoys me too.

When I'm in the grip of a caffeine-fueled rant, callously ignoring anyone who tries to get a word in edgewise, I like to slap the enter key at regular intervals so as to let folks know I'm still typing.

It's just good manners.

So being told I need to send messages less often is the same as being told I need to type slower, or say less. It's a slap in the face. From a robot!

Of COURSE SE chat has glowing red eyes. It watches you always...

Forget spam - disabling the rate-limiter entirely makes griefing too easy. But it would be nice to be able to send two or three reasonably short messages back-to-back without having to wait.

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  • 3
    It's really great to see again that meta works so well. You make a suggestion, it's heavily upvoted, even SE folks agree with you — and then the thing is buried under the huge pile of similar well-received but never acted-upon suggestions. Uh. That is, what meta was invented for, right?
    – sbi
    Commented Jun 25, 2012 at 21:10
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    The "SE" is a tiny bit too sharp around the edges to fit into the rest of the picture, but +1 for the painstaking realism with which you edged "CHAT" into the image.
    – Pekka
    Commented Jul 29, 2012 at 15:03
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    FWIW, @sbi: apparently adjusting the rate-limiter based on reputation is a bit trickier than it sounds. I know balpha's looked into doing this once or twice.
    – Shog9
    Commented Nov 21, 2012 at 14:29
  • @Shog9: How can something be too hard to fix when it, literally, annoys hundreds, if not thousands of people?
    – sbi
    Commented Nov 21, 2012 at 14:49
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    I don't know that it's "too hard to fix", @sbi - but it's more than a trivial change. And it annoys me daily, but... I get by.
    – Shog9
    Commented Nov 21, 2012 at 15:10
  • @Shog9: The limit is something that has to have been built in explicitly. But it's a misfeature, to say the least which affects very many users daily. And if it really is that hard to fix, then that's a bad code smell in my book, and all the more reason to clean up that code ASAP.
    – sbi
    Commented Nov 26, 2012 at 12:17
  • Is this still being reviewed?
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented May 5, 2018 at 2:45
18

We have done some extra work on this. The overall rates haven't changed, but - we now let you post (or edit) once (in any sequence) before the system gets all prissy. This means you can do a quick 2-liner, or a ninja edit, without it complaining. This seems to cover a majority of the cases it is seen, but it still applies an overall rate throttle - so while you can do a quick 2-liner, you still can't suddenly post 40 messages in 10 seconds.

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  • 6
    I can't help but have to downvote this. Sorry, but it's silly. My question was What is that "feature" good for for, actually? Why would you want to throttle my output anyway? You have provided nothing to support its existence. But if it is a misfeature, and you can't explain its existence, why not simple eradicate it?
    – sbi
    Commented Feb 15, 2013 at 22:15
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    @sbi if you don't think that the system needs a throttle, then please allow me to introduce you to the Internet, where users will do silly things just because they can, for the single reason of being obnoxious. We try to make it so that genuine and fair users hardly see these controls, but: I cannot for one moment imagine removing them completely.
    – Marc Gravell
    Commented Feb 15, 2013 at 22:18
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    Chill, man. Why not test drive the new settings first?
    – Pekka
    Commented Feb 16, 2013 at 0:41
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    please change to 4-5 messages at once, then rate-limit for a longer time (10 sec?)! :O
    – Doorknob
    Commented Feb 16, 2013 at 3:11
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    @SaladFruitcake Have you ever been on IRC? What acceptable use case is to be found in posting forty messages in ten seconds?
    – badp
    Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 13:21
  • @SaladFruitcake It helps the discussion in accepting the fact that there is a line to be found beyond which you're almost certainly engaging in abuse. sbi has been challenging this fact.
    – badp
    Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 14:47
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    There is, but there's no reason to assume that 10-20k users will do this, or at least, not enough to justify these controls for them.
    – DeadMG
    Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 14:54
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    @DeadMG There's also no reason to assume that posting 40 messages in 10 seconds is okay because you've got 10k rep.
    – badp
    Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 22:09
9

The idea behind this to avoid mass spamming if a trusted account is taken over by a spammer.

However, I'd also love to see this annoying feature go away. I'm sure there are already other measures in place to detect abusive behaviour.

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  • 48
    How many accounts of trusted users have been taken over by spammers in the last three years? And how many minutes does it take on average for a spammer to be flagged and banned? Really, that's a movie plot scenario. IMO this is security theater.
    – sbi
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 10:09
  • It may seem unlikely, but the damage could be very great if it happens, which means the result of the Impact x Likelihood equation goes up. Not security theatre, but common risk management.
    – Rory Alsop
    Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 21:24
  • @RoryAlsop Spamming is easy to flag. But if a trusted account gets taken over by a spammer, there's much more damaging and insidious things they could do than spamming, so your point doesn't seem relevant for this situation. Relatively speaking, even if an account is compromised, the risk of multiple messages in quick succession damaging the site in any permanent way seems minuscule. I don't think the damage could be very great even makes sense in the context of this question. But you are admittedly more experienced than me about this, so I'd be interested in your response.
    – Graham
    Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 0:23
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It seems to me, your gripe is not with the chat system stopping you from 'spamming' messages to quickley, but from your longer posts being shrunk down with a 'show full text' link at the bottom.

I personally think that current system is just fine. Normal flow of conversation is not halted by the anti-spam filter, if we can accept calling it that and long posts are shrunk so that they do not get in the way.

A long message will break up the chat, as it very quickly pushs messages of the screen. The 'folding' of it prevents this, to a point, but allows users who actually want to read your entire rant post can.

I think the ideal solution, is to allow users to configure post folding. Thus you would be able to disable it for your self, without forcing us to have look at your big fat wall of text.

EDIT

I agree with the anit-spam filter at low levels, if anything, it should have an even longer time out. It helps force people to think a bit more rather then use chat as a stream of conciousness. But like as people reach higher levels of rep, there is no need throttle them in such a fashion. If some one did decide to go wrong, a ban can be applied easy enough.

So yeah, an unlock of "you can now spam chat, but don't" would be a good idea.

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  • I'd be perfectly fine with longer posts requiring an additional click to be fully visible, but they have serious shortcomings.
    – sbi
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 10:14
  • 1
    So now we are back to Letdown (I like that) needing to be fixed for multi-line messages. I still don't see the need to remove the "stop posting so fast" filter
    – thecoshman
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 10:18
  • Look at that link. It won't be fixed because it isn't considered a bug.
    – sbi
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 10:53
  • Looked at the link, thus I knew of this 'Letdown' phrase. Not sure where yo go from here... perhaps a coffee?
    – thecoshman
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 10:58
  • Look at the tags: status-bydesign
    – sbi
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 12:56
  • 4
    I disagree, because I enter many short messages and this pisses me off too.
    – DeadMG
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 13:17
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    No, this fails to account for oneboxed links. The chat system makes it tempting to post many short messages (a good thing, IMHO)! It now must also make it affordable.
    – Konrad Rudolph
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 13:43
2

This answer is an update to explain the status - while I understand your frustrations, I believe the improvements that Marc made in 2013 are sufficient to address standard usage of Chat - for everyone, not only high-reputation users.

I don't personally hit this restriction often but I generally only post two long messages in a row, so the improvements are sufficient for me. I do understand that some people have created nice userscripts that will time chat messages to meet our restrictions, which I think is amusing and lovely.

I think that, while small, removing all of the rate limits for high-rep users is too big of an ask. I've been involved in many discussion spaces, both with and without rate limits and I can see why they have value. They encourage people to slow down and think about what they're posting - and whether they can consolidate their thoughts into fewer (longer) messages. They also prevent people from doing the annoying thing where they post one letter on a line to make a big vertical space.

C
H
A
T
I
S
A
W
S
O
M
E
!
!
!

Even high-rep users can get in silly moods from time to time.

Additionally, if you have something particularly long that you want to keep in a single post (or avoid it getting separated), you do have the option of using multi-line messages, which have virtually no character limit, though they have the downside of not allowing formatting other than paragraphs.

As such, I'm going to say that this is as done as it's going to get.

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  • 1
    So this is declined, not completed.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jan 30, 2023 at 15:34
  • No. The request is specifically to loosen the requirements, and that's what Marc did.
    – Catija
    Commented Jan 30, 2023 at 15:34
  • OP seems to disagree, and I also agree. Maybe add new status status-partially-completed. ;)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jan 30, 2023 at 15:36
  • @ShadowWizardChasingStars The extended description of the tag says it can be applied if an alternate solution is implemented.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Jan 31, 2023 at 1:12
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@thecoshman says:

I agree with the anit-spam filter at low levels, if anything, it should have an even longer time out. It helps force people to think a bit more rather then use chat as a stream of conciousness.

I see no reason to presume that high-rep users are magically any less susceptible to this than low-rep users. Rep does not correlate well with ... well, with anything, really.

I would support slackening the rate limiting as it keeps getting me, too. But I don't see a reason to remove it. I realise that the obvious response now is "give me a reason to keep it" and I can't answer that any better than @thecoshman did.

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