Word lengh in posts

[Hanna3]

i just wrote a long reply to someone and got notified it was over the word length but there is no word count available - I deleted heaps of it and still it said it was over the limit - I was down to a couple of sentences and it still said it was over, so I gave up and deleted the entire reply.  This is so frustrating.  Why is there no word count available when we are typing replies please?

[Croix]

Dear Hanna3~

It is very frustrating that the built-in editor on the Forum does not tell you how many charaters with  spaces (not words) you have written, what is worse is another problem in that it may count more charaters than you have actually written

I get around the problem by using Word and stopping after 2,000 characters and spaces. Then pasting my work into the Forum editor. This seems to work pretty well, at least for me.

If you want more details about charactercount the thread

https://forums.beyondblue.org.au/t5/forums-feedback-and-updates/how-can-we-improve-the-forums/td-p/5...

Deals with this as other people have had the same difficulties. It is a long htread and deals with much more than character count.

I hope this helps

Croix

[Hanna3]

Hi Croix, thank you for replying to me.  Unfortunately I am on a device where I can use Word or cut and paste.  I didn't realize spaces also contributed to the word count- that makes it even trickier!  I'll just have to stick to shorter responses from now on.  

I do appreciate you coming by to assist, thanks mate.

[ProjectTeam]

Hi Hanna3,

Thanks for your feedback and question.

Posts are currently limited to 2,500 characters. A space, a letter, a number and a punctuation mark are all considered one character.

When you start a new discussion/thread it mentions the character limit, and there is a counter that shows you how many characters you have left. But as you've seen, this isn't explained/shown when replying to existing posts. We acknowledge this isn't a great experience, and completely understand how frustrating this would've been.

You mentioned you had edited your post down to a couple of sentences, and it was still saying you were over the limit. This sounds like there was also a bug/error that occurred.

When you write your posts, do you write them directly in the forums? Or do you write them in another app/program and then copy and paste the text into the forums to post it?

[Hanna3]

Hi - I write replies directly into the BB site, I am not able to type them elsewhere and then transfer them.

I thought there must be some sort of bug yesterday - but it is difficult not having a word count for replies to posts, especially after taking the time to give someone a carefully-worded response.  Maybe this could be something the forums could look at fixing?  

I appreciate your coming by and explaining this to me, many thanks.

[tranzcrybe]

[Techs: Could have been something to do with the 'auto-save'?]

Perhaps simply preventing any additional characters from appearing on screen to let people know the limit has been reached before submitting post would save this frustration.

[ProjectTeam]

Hi Hanna3,

Thanks for letting us know, it helps us identify what the bug/issue may have been.

Improving the experience around the character limit on replies is definitely something we'll be looking at. We've recently started a discussion around the character limit. We'd love your thoughts!

[ProjectTeam]

Thanks for the thought tranzcrybe, auto-save could be a factor.

And thank you for the suggestion too. Preventing additional characters from appearing is helpful for those who look at the screen as they type. It might not be the best solution for those who look at their keyboard as they type, and those who are blind or have low vision and use a screen reader.