Nectarine

Yeah this has been well discussed on oneliner, maybe it should be 5 or 6, and not 3, blah blah.
Anyway. From a user-experience perspective I would like to point out something. Suppose that I write a long complicated message, and try to post it, and it gets rejected due to 3-message rule: then it's all gone. And perhaps I had written a really good important message.
So you should consider popping up a message SEPARATELY saying "this can't be posted", without destroying the user's hard work of typing, and what they wrote.
Thanks for consideration. Responses from people in the UX industry please. I'm sick of hearing "it isn't an issue because it doesn't affect me".

Yeah, I think you're raising a really important point, mirrorbird — not just about the arbitrary limit, but about how it's enforced.

The 3-message rule might have its reasons (spam prevention, moderation load, etc), but from a UX standpoint, silently rejecting a message and discarding the text is rough. Especially for a platform like the oneliner where people sometimes write weird, poetic, or thoughtful things — losing that to an invisible throttle is frustrating and demotivating.

A better pattern would be to display the limit clearly and inline, and if someone hits it, preserve the typed message and just show a clear, separate notice: “You’ve reached the 3-message limit. Wait a bit or delete an earlier one.” That way no effort is lost, and the user has a choice.

Also agree that “it’s fine because it doesn’t affect me” is a dead-end argument. We should care about the worst-case scenarios before they drive people away.

Maybe the current limit is a placeholder, but the UX could still show more care — especially for a community-driven space like this one.