It’s better not to take automatic procedures personally.
You could have waited until someone else posted, then posted your message again.
Just testing sequential posts.
Post 2
Just testing sequential posts.
Post 3
Just testing sequential posts.
Post 4
Edited to add: Huh! It let me post another one sequentially a few hours later. So it’s only too many in a short time period that are blocked.
Automatic or not, they make me feel unwelcome and so I leave.
The problem is, it’s not really the software’s place to decide any of that. The mods and the community decide what is or is not the correct way to post, not the software.
And, like most of the automated messages in Discourse, the mods here at least don’t tend to agree with them. The mods may choose stop someone from posting too often in a thread, but it’s entirely on a case-by-case basis. And there’s never been a hard limit on how many posts one can make in a row, or a rule that you should reply to multiple posts in a single post.
Not that having the tools to do this sort of thing is bad. Discourse offers a lot of helpful tools. If a place does have rules like that agree with the automation, or could use the help, it’s great. But it would be really nice if there was a way to come in and say “we don’t really need the automation, thanks” and have it just turn all of it off, rather than having to track down all the individual settings, or, in some cases, not even finding a setting at all.
I meant it when I said that there is no message board that will have all the same requirements as any other—the ideal forum software must be modular to be able to work for everyone
But it’s even better to report the flaws in the automated procedures. And if that flaw includes that the wording makes you feel unwelcome, that’s valid. It’s valid to point out that taking on a conversational tone creates this more personal feel to it.
You also seem to be testing a different problem than the OP is talking about: They’re talking about being told they’ve posted too much—that they’ve taken up X% of the thread. That’s not about sequential posts.
The OP has a point saying that discouraging participation is not necessarily the best thing. Having a dumb computer try to figure out it someone is dominating the conversation is not a good thing. It can only be good if it’s right more often than wrong, and, given it tripped up @Northern_Piper of all people, I can’t think it’s more likely right. He’s never been the type to hijack the conversation to be about himself.
Heck, even the assumption that we’re having a “conversation” isn’t necessarily correct on this board. Sometimes it’s about playing a game, and is intended to be a small number of people going back and forth. Sometimes it’s a single poster keeping a record of things with mod approval. Sometimes we’re helping someone with a problem, providing tech support, where there will once again be a lot of one person dominating the thread who is not the OP.
The tone of the messages are always like it knows better than the humans, which is not only condescending, but often untrue. If there a piece of software and its users disagree, it’s almost always the software that is wrong. There is a reason the best conversational automated messages are self-deprecating and provide a way to appeal them.
“I’m just a bot. If you think I made a mistake, feel free to contact my maintainers at ____” is how Reddit does it. And Reddit is hands down the most popular forum software in existence right now.
Oh that one, the percentage of overall replies to the topic (when it’s a topic you don’t own). That is configurable via a site setting, so it could be made less aggressive than the default if it is an ongoing issue.
This has never been in dispute; what you need is an admin with the ability to make the agreed upon changes to the site settings.
Don’t we still have the problem that our Administrator is deceased and a successor has not yet been put into place?
Let’s see… per About - Straight Dope Message Board there are five administrators. These lists are ambiently ordered by date of presence so, the people at the top were on the site most recently.
Thanks for the link.
Tubadiva was our admin, but she died. Ed Zotti is our acting admin for dealing with our owners and for setting policy, but he’s not acting as a technical admin. I, a mod, don’t recognize the other three names. They may be people hired to help with the conversation to this software. None is currently active in a “listen to user requests and potentially change settings” way.
Can we talk Ed into making these changes, with community consensus? 
The other option is for Ed to promote one of the mods to an admin. Note that admin is a very privileged role, and (insert Uncle Ben Quote Here) …
For everyone’s safety, Discourse software automatically invalidates the email of any admin who hasn’t logged in for a year. This forces the wayward admin to do the “yes, I can confirm that I, an actual human person, am in control of the name@example.com email address” dance if they haven’t been seen in a very long time. And of course we have built in two factor auth support for all users, which can be enforced for staff if the site owners deem it so.
If some of the others were only involved for the conversion, I’ll ask behind the scenes to see if their admin status can be removed for security reasons, and also to “make room” for other potentially active admins?