Bio limits too restrictive

[trwnh]

Rationale

100-ish characters is a bit too low for conveying more than a short sentence or two. One can use profile fields to fit more information, but only for non-essential supplementary things, because profile fields aren't as widely supported in alternative implementations.

Pitch

Slightly increase the default character limit on bios. Maybe make it the same as statuses (500?) But IMO at least 420.

[robinmaypanpan]

Increasing the length of the bio seems to be one of the most common changes people do to their instance forks.

[ealgase]

Yeah, having bios being shorter than statuses pushes many people to put their bio information in pinned toots, which is far worse in terms of functionality.

[ValiantNinja]

Honestly, it would be nice to just have options for most limits. Even if it's in the .env.production, something to change our own limitations when it comes to status/bio lengths. I've found myself and others like @joycem137 stated, making forks to change such small things which could be pulled from a config.

[nightpool]

I think more people making forks is basically always a good thing. people should be able to customize their software to suit their needs, not have to rely on the options it gives them.

…

On Fri, Apr 26, 2019, 8:47 AM Valiant ***@***.***> wrote: Honestly, it would be nice to just have options for most limits. Even if it's in the .env.production, something to change our own limitations when it comes to status/bio lengths. I've found myself and others like @joycem137 <https://github.com/joycem137> stated, making forks to change such small things which could be pulled from a config. — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#10628 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AABZCV4DPSSL4ZF43NTFIBDPSL2WJANCNFSM4HHV4HEA> .

[ValiantNinja]

I partly agree, it's good to see forks but they're only to change small trivial things. If they were changing big parts, altering it to suit them or others it would make more sense. It was merely an idea to cut down on those pointless forks and make it easier for instance admins to change things without having to alter code. I wouldn't mind taking the time to learn some ruby and implement this myself, you could just have it fallback to defaults. Just an idea which could be of benefit.

[robinmaypanpan]

Correct. Forks should be for changing/adding features, not adjusting config values.

[jamescallumyoung]

I actually really like the short limit; it makes it feel more focused.

If this changes, it should be configurable.

We'll have to take into account how this is displayed too; a really long bio could necessitate a fold ("show more").

[FinlayDaG33k]

I personally think a "show more" would be a trade-off most people here are willing to make.
In my bio, I have added a small text, my Matrix account and my XMPP account.
That's all that fits in there...
I think having a higher character limit along with a fold would be a nice addition.

[trwnh]

i'm fine with "show more" if it allows for longer bios. personally i'm not asking for a lot of space, but "show more" is a good idea to prevent bios with line breaks from getting too tall as well.

[psydwannabe]

I really think it's unnecessary to have a "show more" button on a bio length of 500 characters. For reference, here's what 500 characters looks like:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis a mi ut massa facilisis pulvinar in ut velit. Nam vel mauris ac felis dapibus porttitor. Aliquam sit amet elementum elit. Aliquam sagittis accumsan justo tincidunt maximus. Aliquam tincidunt euismod nunc eu auctor. Sed nec aliquam elit. Nulla facilisi. Proin eget augue in dui scelerisque vehicula suscipit in purus. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Nullam sit amet elementum sem, ac suscipit mi. Etiam non diam auctor, tempus cras amet.

Do you really need a "Show more" button half way through that? This seems excessive.

[trwnh]

@psydwannabe imagine that bio at the narrow widths used for mastodon columns, or for the profile sidebar. it would look like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur
adipiscing elit. Duis a mi ut massa facilisis
pulvinar in ut velit. Nam vel mauris ac felis
dapibus porttitor. Aliquam sit amet elementum
elit. Aliquam sagittis accumsan justo tincidunt
maximus. Aliquam tincidunt euismod nunc eu
auctor. Sed nec aliquam elit. Nulla facilisi.
Proin eget augue in dui scelerisque vehicula
suscipit in purus. In hac habitasse platea
dictumst. Nullam sit amet elementum sem, ac
suscipit mi. Etiam non diam auctor, tempus
cras amet.

now, i may not need all of that space -- i'd need maybe about half of it. but that would still be a good 50-60% longer than the current maximum. which is why i'm asking for "not 160", but also probably "not more than 500" -- 250-420 seems reasonable, depending on what you include. (i.e. line breaks would make a bio take up even more space, just like some toots can be really long due to line breaks)

[psydwannabe]

One paragraph at half margins is still one paragraph. And it's bio text! What basis is there for an objection outside of a personal preference for how much others should be permitted to speak about themselves on their profile page on a social networking site?

Some people could certainly abuse carriage returns in bio text, but the only place it shows up is on profile pages, so the point is really quite moot.

If the only place you're able to destroy with bad formatting is your own profile page, I say more power to you.

[trwnh]

i'm not objecting obviously, i'm all for raising the limit which is why i filed this issue. but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea to have a "show more" in-webapp at least, just like there already is for long statuses from remote servers that don't have 500 char limit.

[psydwannabe]

@trwnh - Right, and my counter-point is that long statuses having "read more" buttons appended to them makes sense because that stuff gets pushed to the feeds of other users. The bio exists in one place only: The user's profile page-- and that page should belong to that user.

Besides, we're talking about 500 characters max here. That's a maximum of 250 lines from someone trying to troll people who visit their profile page-- which takes all of 1 second to scroll past. Adding a "show more" button turns this from a simple configuration change to requiring additional code to solve a problem that doesn't really exist.

I'm 1000% behind your feature suggestion as initially proposed- I'm just trying to avoid complicating it into obscurity.

[Gargron]

It used to be that the bio used the header image as background and the taller the bio was the more the image was stretched, which was the original reason for the short character limit. Now the layout is different so I don't really care how long the bios are. If you want 500 characters, I'm fine with that.

[trwnh]

I'd say tie it to the status limit but i really don't care how it gets done, hardcoded 500 works too

[ealgase]

I'd say tie it to the status limit but i really don't care how it gets done, hardcoded 500 works too

Hardcoding defaults is one of the worst things about this project. There are currently forks just to change the status length limit, when that should be an administrative setting.

[trwnh]

well a lot of stuff should be configurable but that doesn't seem to be the philosophy of this project w/r/t defaults, so i'm not going to push too hard about it

[FinlayDaG33k]

A slightly more complicated approach would be to add a page to a profile with "about" (which is basically the bio)...
Again, more complicated but it'd give the user all the space he/she could want without screwing the layout over too much.
Don't know if something like this would be a possibility?

[trwnh]

@FinlayDaG33k that's a completely different request. i'd recommend making a separate issue if you want an arbitrary page for users to edit. this issue is only about raising the bio limit

[Amolith]

Until this is fixed, if you or your admin has cli access, I've documented character count tweaks in my wiki.
https://wiki.nixnet.xyz/books/masto-tweaks/page/character-count

[naught101]

Related - (extra) short bio field request: #21277