Firstly, it depends on your forum member level as to what the time is. It's different for new members than it is for arms and trusted advisors and whatnot.
Secondly, it's staying. Don't go around the forum just replying with short sentences and chatter. I know we need some banter but if you're not in that clique, it's not nice. And it's totally not useful for the thread. Which probably isn't a thread you created yourself - so why doe the thread started want loads of banter about say football when their thread is about them trying to find a certain tap or something?
It's to give you time to think about what you're writing. And to stop posting crap to the forum.
I will reduce it at some point, but right now I can still see lots of threads going off topic and whatnot.
I'll come spend a couple of weeks on here soon. Just finishing off the sparky forum. And I'll adjust all the settings again now we're getting used to this new software. And we'll see what happens then.
I am listening. Just haven't got the time always to reply or change a setting.
But the 'Word Minimum', 'Merge Double Post', and 'Thread Reply Throttling' is all part of the bigger picture to stop chatter taking threads off topic and to encourage good on-topic replies.
Make your own thread about the banter in the off-topic general chat forum area if you want bants. I'll perhaps relax all the settings in that category so you can quickly reply with one word each and make a thread massive with only 100 words in it.
But in a topic that's not yours, and is about a good topic, we want it to have nice paragraphs and lots of detail in it etc.
That takes more than 3 words, takes longer than 90 seconds to write, and doesn't require you typing three separate posts one after the next without other people replying between them.