Quoting

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I've noticed a handful of posters for some reason modify the quote attributions (i.e. stripping the timestamp, removing the attribution entirely and manually adding in their own attribution which is sometimes not correct). I'm curious why people do this since the quote feature does everything for you, but particularly because it makes it harder to go back and find the original quote you are sourcing from; instead of clicking the original quote and being able to link to it, it requires manually searching for it.

Just curious more than anything.

[froggie]

Possibly alluding to me.  Basically years of habit and doing it manually in my case.  Plus, most of the time, I don't want to quote the entire post but just the relevant items I'm replying to.  Easier to copy/paste and add the square brackets manually than it is to use the "quote button" and dig/delete out what's not needed.

[Rothman]

Probably just a matter of me just trying to avoid an unnecessary wall-of-quotes when I'm responding to someone.  I suppose I use a blunt ax rather than a scalpel when trimming the quotes down.

[J N Winkler]

When I am doing an interspersed reply (dividing the original post into chunks and replying separately to each chunk), I copy and paste the quote attribution at the start of each quoted chunk after the first.  This works well, but is probably not intuitive without some familiarity with the mechanics of database-driven Web forums.  (On our forum, timestamp and linkback to the quoted post is produced from the post ID embedded in the quote tag.)

[vdeane]

I generally don't worry about preserving quote attribution if I split a post up into multiple quotes.  It's there on the first one, so I figure people are smart enough to figure out that the other quoted pieces are from the same post.

[hbelkins]

Hey, can we turn this into a debate on top posting/bottom posting/inline posting? It'll harken back to the good old days of MTR! 

[kphoger]

I just wish people would trim their quotes... instead of quoting a huge post with giant pictures, when all they're really replying to is one phrase.

This also gets annoying:

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+1 !

[1995hoo]

Possibly alluding to me.  Basically years of habit and doing it manually in my case.  Plus, most of the time, I don't want to quote the entire post but just the relevant items I'm replying to.  Easier to copy/paste and add the square brackets manually than it is to use the "quote button" and dig/delete out what's not needed.

This is a useful tip if you're posting via mobile device, especially if (as I'm doing now via an iPad) you use the browser rather than the Tapatalk app. Editing the quotes on a mobile device is a hassle unless you use an external keyboard.

[7/8]

Possibly alluding to me.  Basically years of habit and doing it manually in my case.  Plus, most of the time, I don't want to quote the entire post but just the relevant items I'm replying to.  Easier to copy/paste and add the square brackets manually than it is to use the "quote button" and dig/delete out what's not needed.

This is a useful tip if you're posting via mobile device, especially if (as I'm doing now via an iPad) you use the browser rather than the Tapatalk app. Editing the quotes on a mobile device is a hassle unless you use an external keyboard.

I personally find copying and paste difficult on the iPad. Even though it's time consuming, I find it easier to use the quote button and delete the stuff I don't want. The worst is if I open a new tab on the iPad to get a picture link, then go back to AAroads and the page reloads and I lose everything I typed.

[1995hoo]

I guess the difference, in my mind, is that if I copy and paste, I do that before I start typing my reply. If I choose to edit, I often (not always, but often) wait until I've written my comment. Why, I don't know. I just do. So if I'm copying and pasting, I don't lose anything I've written. I think what it boils down to for me is that the post editing window is small enough that you can't see everything without scrolling and on the iPad I find that difficult when selecting text because the slightest misstep means you lose the highlighting.

Either way, it's somewhat interesting to hear what works and doesn't work for different users.

The point about editing down long strings of quotes is very valid but is also one of the causes of mangled quotes when people mess up the opening and closing tags.

[vdeane]

The mangled quotes issue is a good argument for the use of the "preview" button.

[kphoger]

The mangled quotes issue is a good argument for the use of the "preview" button.

Indeed, I've made it a habit to ALWAYS preview my post if there's the smoothest chance I messed up the quote feature.

I get on the forum from my cell phone a lot (which is why 'slightest' became 'smoothest' just now, stupid swipe), and I use the full site rather than Tapatalk. I just don't like apps very much, I guess. Anyway, I use the quote feature frequently. It's difficult to trim quotes on my cell phone due to the tiny text box, but I make it work. What's really hard on my phone is quoting multiple posts in the same reply. Anyway, I trim the quote before typing my reply. If quoting more than one post, I even use the quote feature on both before typing any of my replies.

[SignGeek101]

The mangled quotes issue is a good argument for the use of the "preview" button.

Indeed, I've made it a habit to ALWAYS preview my post if there's the smoothest chance I messed up the quote feature.

I get on the forum from my cell phone a lot (which is why 'slightest' became 'smoothest' just now, stupid swipe), and I use the full site rather than Tapatalk. I just don't like apps very much, I guess. Anyway, I use the quote feature frequently. It's difficult to trim quotes on my cell phone due to the tiny text box, but I make it work. What's really hard on my phone is quoting multiple posts in the same reply. Anyway, I trim the quote before typing my reply. If quoting more than one post, I even use the quote feature on both before typing any of my replies.

Same here. I don't think I've ever messed up a post for that reason. Most people I guess don't know, or are just too lazy.

[vtk]

Something in the first 10 posts of this thread crashes my Tapatalk app. I think it might be deeply nested quotes. Let's try not to do that in the future.

[1995hoo]

Something in the first 10 posts of this thread crashes my Tapatalk app. I think it might be deeply nested quotes. Let's try not to do that in the future.

Reply #7 has 12 quotes nested in order to make a point.

The mangled quotes issue is a good argument for the use of the "preview" button.

Agreed, although somehow I suspect certain people would still screw it up anyway. Some people just don't have a good eye for those sorts of codes. (I've always thought of it as being not too dissimilar to the WordPerfect "Reveal Codes" feature, which I used religiously back in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. Maybe that made me more accustomed to looking at this style of code, who knows.)

[vdeane]

I'll admit that it can be hard to find the offending code.  Usually it's an extra or missing quote tag.  It will at least show the person that something is wrong, which I would hope would be enough; if I come across a post with a mangled quote, I'm not going to spend a couple minutes trying to find what the person posted (since that's even harder than finding an extra tag in your own post), I'm just going to ignore the whole post.  I imagine most people are similar, so posting a mangled quote is a good way for one to ensure their post will be ignored by most everyone.

[J N Winkler]

I generally don't worry about preserving quote attribution if I split a post up into multiple quotes.  It's there on the first one, so I figure people are smart enough to figure out that the other quoted pieces are from the same post.

I used not to worry about preserving attribution for each quoted chunk, but I do it after seeing several instances of unattributed quotes from different people in the same post.  These include a few posts where some of the quotes were attributed but others were not, thus potentially misleading the reader as to source of the unattributed quotes.  It is still possible to screw up and paste the wrong attribution to a given quote, but at least attributing each quote signals intent to deal fairly.

Indeed, I've made it a habit to ALWAYS preview my post if there's the smoothest chance I messed up the quote feature.

I get on the forum from my cell phone a lot (which is why 'slightest' became 'smoothest' just now, stupid swipe), and I use the full site rather than Tapatalk. I just don't like apps very much, I guess. Anyway, I use the quote feature frequently. It's difficult to trim quotes on my cell phone due to the tiny text box, but I make it work. What's really hard on my phone is quoting multiple posts in the same reply. Anyway, I trim the quote before typing my reply. If quoting more than one post, I even use the quote feature on both before typing any of my replies.

Where mobile devices are concerned, my question is:  do I have to reply immediately, or can it wait until I am somewhere where I can use more competent equipment?  I have a Bluetooth keyboard and now have the option of actually typing on my phone without resorting to Swype or putting up with Google Keyboard autocorrect, which has recently gotten aggressive, to the point where I can thumb-type the same word three or more times and have it turned into an incorrect word without it being entered into memory as a "new" word (it seems you now have to pause quite a long time after a new word to bypass this behavior).  But I still prefer to compose posts on my laptop since I can just Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, then Ctrl+Alt+P (private "Post Archiver" script) to keep a true local copy in case of board meltdown/admin tomfoolery/failure to pay database hosting charges.

The mangled quotes issue is a good argument for the use of the "preview" button.

Agreed, although somehow I suspect certain people would still screw it up anyway. Some people just don't have a good eye for those sorts of codes. (I've always thought of it as being not too dissimilar to the WordPerfect "Reveal Codes" feature, which I used religiously back in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. Maybe that made me more accustomed to looking at this style of code, who knows.)

WordPerfect codes, bbCode tags, and HTML tags are all examples of explicit markup, and here the basic problem is that missing or extra open (close) tags are not being found at locations well adrift from the close (open) tags that exist.  This is a mistake that is very easy even for clued-in people to make if they access the board through an awkward interface that requires heavy scrolling for simple actions.  I have made it a few times myself and while I usually catch it within five minutes (often in time to correct it before the system puts in an "Edited" line), I have to thank moderators for taking the initiative to straighten out the ones I have overlooked.

I suspect this problem will become much less common when the purveyors of forum software start implementing realtime bbCode syntax checking.

[formulanone]

I do not see a reason to reply to the entirety of a long post just to point out one or two sentences, or a single paragraph. Also, if you trim and modify the argument at the OP's paragraph breaks, it makes it easier to everyone else to understand what you're discussing. I get it, phones and tablets make this a lot more difficult than it should be. But on a desktop or laptop, there's no excuse.

And to those that constantly re-post the half-dozen quotes at once, especially when they are no longer part of the argument...please stop.

In defense, the quoting for BB Code within SMF, as compared to other forum software (like myBB, Xenforo, Ikonboard) works a bit differently, so quoting and nesting do work a bit funny.

[1995hoo]

I do not see a reason to reply to the entirety of a long post just to point out one or two sentences, or a single paragraph. Also, if you trim and modify the argument at the OP's paragraph breaks, it makes it easier to everyone else to understand what you're discussing. ....

....

I like to use ellipses (as I've done here) precisely to help focus the point while making it clear enough where the omissions are. The reason for the four-dot ellipses comes from a legal citation standard that calls for using closing punctuation following the ellipsis.

[jeffandnicole]

At the very least when I'm quoting someone with a picture, and feel the pic is relevant enough to be quoted, I'll try to reduce the size of the pic in half.  You've already seen the pic once (or 6 times in other quotes), so I don't feel the need to show the overly-large picture once again.  Half-sized is good enough.