Is it a bad thing to require a MINIMUM response length for a Complaint field?
I hate to dictate what any user feedback consists of, but it seems to me like you should be able to come up with at least 10 characters to complain about?!
What do you think? :-/
Thanks,
Debbie
:-/
And you really shouldn’t. There are some forums that dictate how many characters need to posted in order for a post to get through. I don’t like being told how long my complaint has to be.
How great is the chance that someone will write a complaint that consists of less than ten characters? And even then, if someone’s able to be so concise in formulating his complaint in no more than ten characters, then I’d say, that’s one heck of an admirable accomplishment. 
10 characters was arbitrary.
But what if the submit an empty field? (What started this.)
Or just 1 or 2 characters?
Still probably someone screwing around…
Ya know?!
Debbie
P.S. Of course, r937 is a ONE-WORD kind of man…
Yes, but the logic would be the same were it ten, twenty or two characters.
a) If it’s a mandatory field, then an error message should be retrieved when the requirement isn’t met.
b) ref. above
Maybe, maybe not. Has this issue come up for you before? If it were my site, I’d try and make my site as user-friendly, simple, and accessible as possible and avoid restrictions where they’re not needed. If the scenario you describe is a realistic issue, meaning it’s currently happening on a massive scale, then some sort of precaution should be taken. If you get the odd weird message every now and then, however, then I’d not do any intervention of any kind.
Yes, but it was clear and concise, wasn’t it?
It is a “Post a Complaint” field, so by definition it is required.
If you get the odd weird message every now and then, however, then I’d not do any intervention of any kind.
Okay.
Yes, but it was clear and concise, wasn’t it?
And, no, :-/ is not clear, but whatever?!
Debbie
Do you have to be registered/logged in order to post a complaint or can just anyone do it?
You have to be a Logged In Member, which means I am probably being too paranoid - as usual - but as a developer, it is my nature to try to keep control, especially of what goes into my system.
All of this started today when I realized I could click “Report Profile” or “Report Comment” without any content.
Obviously I could add an empty() check, but then I wondered if maybe I should require people to type a few words or characters, since it would be pretty hard to communicate any valid complaint in one word or less than a few characters. (Anything is debatable, but I’m trying to be practical here.)
Debbie
spam
I don’t know if I’m being naive, but I’d think that if someone were part of the community and felt the need to report something, they’d know that their post must actually contain information you can work with. If you get a report that contains a single letter or similar, then it was probably submitted by mistake or a prank, something you could act against since the offending user’s data is in your db.
Even spammers usually post more than a letter or two, usually with a link which naturally contains quite a few characters.
I’d definitely make sure that an empty post cannot be submitted, however. I’d just not set a character limit which is a personal preference.
touché
Fair enough.
Thanks,
Debbie
I wouldn’t bother setting a character minimum on complaint posts. If the thread the complaint is posted in allows posted dialogue between the complainant and the suport person then sometimes a simple one word answer might be all that is required from the complainant to a question from the support person.
If you have a min number of chars set, then you will be forcing the complainant to type extra redundant chars, giving them another reason to complain 
I set most feedback/comment fields to a minimum length of 3-5 characters unless there is a requirements for less. I’m sure some may disagree with it being useful, but I think I’d prefer people to write something rather than just “no” or “yes” or some other one word response.