I see a lot of threads and discussions mentioning the term, especially in signature campaigns and such.
How would someone define a constructive post?
You cannot define a constructive post because quite often the border between a constructive post and an non-constructive post is messy.
Some are clearly constructive, some are clearly not - but there are a lot in-between.
This is what I had put in for the FAQ in Da Dice campaign:
11. What do you mean by quality?
What we look for:
1. Genuineness. Posts are not made solely for the campaign.
2. Content. Posts are made with useful and meaningful information. Not made when there is no reason to.
3. Relevant. Does not repeat or rephrase something already said. Helpful to OP and/or others reading it. Conversations, etc., are quite fine. But that shouldn't be everything.
4. Understandability - We don't require very good English. But it should be reasonably understandable.
5. Contribution to the topic - Must meaningfully contribute to the discussion or topic or question.
What we don't:
1. Length. That said most of the posts should not be too short. Brief posts are fine, when only that is required to make the point.
Now an example of non-constructive post:
Almost 900
Since you're a hobbit, you'll hit it ~1500 because of height
You mean age
That ring keeps me young
The thing is if I had made it to 2 lines on why it is almost 900, why it should have been more/less and other useless stuff, it wouldn't have got deleted.
Example: (unlikely to be deleted, though the content is almost the same)
MY activity is almost 900.. still not Legendary... think I will be the first person on bitcointalk to become Legendary on 1030
That explains why my views are different from mods views and every mod is like to have a different opinion, and every person on Earth is like to have a different opinion.
So forget definitions..
Constructiveness is subjective.