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Quotes

2

2123

New member
Geez Louise........why is it so dang complicated to quote from another post on this forum?

I'm a member on several different forums, and quoting is no big deal. Some make it so easy as to even have a "quote" button you can click on. :rolleyes:
 
Why?

Because people abused it badly.

They'd quote a huge post just to address a small part of it. Or, worse, just to say "That's neat," or "+1" or something else completely inane.

It got really bad when people would chain quote, bringing in multiple quotes just to add a few words, something that I christened "quotarding" many years ago.

So, the quote button was done away with.

This thread discusses how to quote: http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=323215
 
Mike Irwin said:
It got really bad when people would chain quote, bringing in multiple quotes just to add a few words, something that I christened "quotarding" many years ago.

So, the quote button was done away with.
Click to expand...

Hi Mike, I think the "many years ago" might be the operative phrase here. I'm registered on 9 other boards and post on them all. I'm really not noticing the super long quotes and excessive chain quotes that you describe, nowadays. When they do pop up the mods are quick to cut them to size and if continued, the guilty party is put "on the clock".

I'd like to see the staff do a re-evaluation of the quote buttons and see their reappearance if possible. They could be reintroduced with the announcement that it is a trial basis and if abused they will again be withdrawn.
 
AZRoger, welcome to TFL. :)

What you suggest is not going to happen.

Copy the passage you want to quote, click the "quote" icon at the upper left of the reply box, and paste. Done. (This is the quote icon:
quote.gif
)

If you find that too difficult... I don't know what to tell you.
 
Do those other forums use the exact same software that TFL uses? That can make a critical difference.

Several software versions allow "quote stripping."

If someone, for example Fred, qutoes a passage, from Ted, who has quoted Ed, the result would be stacked quotes.

With quote stripping, Fred's message would only quote Ted. Ed's quote (from Ted's message) is stripped.

Unfortunately, Vbulletin doesn't have that capability, and given the general nature of posters, none of us have any doubt that we'd quickly go right back down the quotard tunnel.

On a board as large and as active as TFL, if only 10% of each message required us to manually prune them, it's simply more work than we're able to put in.

Our system forces people to think about what they're quoting, why they're quoting it, and if they really need to quote it in the first place.

We like that.
 
AZRoger said:
. . . .I'd like to see the staff do a re-evaluation of the quote buttons and see their reappearance if possible. They could be reintroduced with the announcement that it is a trial basis and if abused they will again be withdrawn.
Click to expand...
Welcome to TFL, AZRoger!

We (the staff here) see this request on a semi-regular basis. I, for one, don't see any need to reintroduce a button that was badly abused in the past, only to figure out if our members are going to abuse it in the future and then, quite likely, to remove it again.

As Mike Irwin said:
Mike Irwin said:
Our system forces people to think about what they're quoting, why they're quoting it, and if they really need to quote it in the first place.

We like that.
Click to expand...
Yes, we like that.
 
Vanya said:
If you find that too difficult... I don't know what to tell you.
Click to expand...
Not too difficult, Vanya, but more difficult than it need be. I did it, but I'm reasonably board savvy. Many are not!
 
Mike Irwin said:
Our system forces people to think about what they're quoting, why they're quoting it, and if they really need to quote it in the first place.

We like that.
Click to expand...
I'll chime in also to add that I like it too. It's actually pretty easy to do, and copy-and-pasting is a breeze on most devices, even my Samsung tablet. And it encourages people to quote only the specific passages to which they're responding and not the whole post. So, aside from having the thread be less cluttered, it tends to be more understandable because you know what specific comments the responses are aimed at.
 
Oh, and just to be up front about this...

I was counseled by staff in my first few days here for...

quotarding

Hard and fast and often.
 
I am a very active participant on just two discussion forums these days. TFL and my state-based grass roots political forum. My state-based forum has traditional quote system and it is a TRAIN WRECK. It is precisely what has been described as the reason we don't have the button here.

It took me about 3 days here on TFL to figure out that I could copy the part I wished to address and quickly present it as a previously posted quote. It is so natural to do that I almost never use the quote button on my state-based forum, but I do the "double face palm" as I sift through the lazy, 'quotarded' posts that stack up in the other forum.

Personal maximum quote pet peeve?
The quotes imbedded in quotes is total eyeball-gouging puddle of vomit on the screen for sure, but the MOST annoying simply must be the guy who quotes the 100% entirety of the LAST post, picture included, and this post is RIGHT above his, so he quotes the entire thing, and then adds "Yeah, what HE^ said"
 
We appreciate that some people feel differently about some of the aspects of how TFL operates, quoting being one of them. That's always going to be the case with a board as large and as active as this one.

We believe that our reasoning continues to be as sound today as it was when the quote button was removed, and as shown in this and other threads, multiple options for quoting in a deliberate and cogent manner have been demonstrated. We feel that they are more than adequate to the task at hand for our membership.

As such, the quote button will not be returning to TFL.
 
If you're just referring to the last post by another user, it's often easier, and perfectly clear, to preface your comment with the name of the user you're replying to, like you would in a letter, or to use the @name reference style popularized by Twitter.
 
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