CT United States
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May 21, 2008
781 Posts
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Just an observation on quoting posts in the forum.. A few of the other forums I am on work with quoting differenty. Most of the time members will only want to quote a portion of another member's posts, or quote a few members at a time. Some of the other forums put text in the reply box itself, with something like:
[quote="MemberNameHere"]this is the post you are quoting[/quote]
And then your reply goes below. This allows you to remove portions of the quote, or add a few quotes in the same reply box. Now it seems most of the members (myself included) will sometimes just copy/paste quotes from the other member and color them differently. Sometimes I open up a few different windows so I can have my reply box in one, and the posts I need to copy/paste in the other.
Is this something you have considered in the past Todd? I personally like this method, not sure how the other members feel though.
New Jersey United States
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May 31, 2000
27,962 Posts Online
Quote: Originally posted by Stew12 on Oct 4, 2008
Just an observation on quoting posts in the forum.. A few of the other forums I am on work with quoting differenty. Most of the time members will only want to quote a portion of another member's posts, or quote a few members at a time. Some of the other forums put text in the reply box itself, with something like:
[quote="MemberNameHere"]this is the post you are quoting[/quote]
And then your reply goes below. This allows you to remove portions of the quote, or add a few quotes in the same reply box. Now it seems most of the members (myself included) will sometimes just copy/paste quotes from the other member and color them differently. Sometimes I open up a few different windows so I can have my reply box in one, and the posts I need to copy/paste in the other.
Is this something you have considered in the past Todd? I personally like this method, not sure how the other members feel though.
I purposely do not quote in that way, for several reasons.
One is that people often mis-quoted other people when the system worked that way several years ago. It is not fair that someone should be able to alter or cherry-pick another member's post.
Another problem is that if a member revises their post within the allotted 20 minutes, it is unfair that another member should be able to "snapshot" their original post by quoting old text, especially if they made an error in their post.
I absolutely love the current quoting system because it automatically updates modified quoted text from the original post, and allows the full context of the person's post to be represented. Another member cannot dissect someone's post, and take words out of context.
Edit: I forgot to mention another biggie: When people are allowed to quote however they like, the forum becomes a mess, with everyone doing it in a different way. The current system makes every post consistent, with the quoted text appearing first, followed by the reply.
ANOTHER biggie: When people post quoted text inside their own posts, people who later quote those posts include previous quotes, and so on, and the size of the posts grows enormously. They become nearly unreadable. The current system only quotes ONE previous post, so the size remains smaller and highly readable.
New Jersey United States
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May 31, 2000
27,962 Posts Online
BTW, thanks for posting your suggestion. I appreciate that you not only suggested it, but even included an example. I wanted to give you my complete explanation of the current system, since you took the time to post a good question/suggestion.
CT United States
Member #61,396
May 21, 2008
781 Posts
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No problem Todd, all excellent reasons. Another reason against my suggestion is that often posts will become a mess when members accidentally delete portions of the quote code and you'll end up with a missing bracket and the printout is destroyed completely, only showing half text, half messed up code all over the reply. As a programmer myself, I can appreciate anything that is designed to be 100% idiot proof!
It also gets really anoying when people learn to modify the quotes and enter things like:
[quote="Stew12"]I'm a big stupid dummy[/quote]
..and it looks legit, but is obviously 100% made up.
I didn't even think about the quotes within quotes within quotes that take up way too much space on the page. That is a big downside to that method, that's for sure.
New Jersey United States
Member #1
May 31, 2000
27,962 Posts Online
Quote: Originally posted by Stew12 on Oct 7, 2008
No problem Todd, all excellent reasons. Another reason against my suggestion is that often posts will become a mess when members accidentally delete portions of the quote code and you'll end up with a missing bracket and the printout is destroyed completely, only showing half text, half messed up code all over the reply. As a programmer myself, I can appreciate anything that is designed to be 100% idiot proof!
It also gets really anoying when people learn to modify the quotes and enter things like:
[quote="Stew12"]I'm a big stupid dummy[/quote]
..and it looks legit, but is obviously 100% made up.
I didn't even think about the quotes within quotes within quotes that take up way too much space on the page. That is a big downside to that method, that's for sure.
Regarding your last sentence, that's exactly what happened. It was comical how big some posts used to get, with a tiny addition of new text at the end of pages of quoted material. (e.g., the word "Thanks!" posted at the end of 3 pages of quoted posts.)