Attributed Quote on Non-Mobile Site

[Apollys]

How can I create an attributed quote (Quote by userXXX, blah blah blah...) without typing in all the details manually?  Most nice forums I've seen have a highlight-and-quote feature or something of the like.

[edelweis]

Most nice forums I've seen have a highlight-and-quote feature or something of the like.

Well then, this isn't a nice forum

The quote feature is disabled on purpose.

If you really want it, you can change to the mobile version by clicking the "Change Theme" link at the bottom of the page.

[Apollys]

I know your first line was a joke, but I feel I should preface this post with the fact that I really like this forum.  A lot!

 

Okay, let me address the issue more specifically.  I have seen a thread about quoting being disabled because of users quoting more more text than necessary.  That has no bearing on what I am talking about here.

 

In that thread, one of the site admins was complaining about how when given a quote button, people abuse/misuse it by quoting irrelevant material.  Therefore, his solution was to remove the quote feature entirely.  I don't mean to sound harsh, but a nine year old can see the flaw in that logic.  It's like saying you don't like your child playing computer games while you're away, so you're going to throw his computer out the window of the top floor of a skyscraper.  In the world of applications, if you think your user is misusing a feature of your application, that's probably because you designed it poorly, not because all your users happen to be dunderheads (especially on a site like this).  Suppose you had a site where by default users simply login using their email address with no password required, but you allow them to add a password by navigating to some specific page and changing it.  Should you be surprised if a "hacker" comes along and suddenly compromises a massive amount of your user accounts? No.  Same thing here: if the easiest default behavior is that clicking that quote button includes the entire post's text, and the only way to quote the correct specific text is to first quote it all and then manually find the part you actually wanted, keep that part, and cut everything else out around it... Should you be surprised if most people just quote the whole thing? No.  If you want users to do something, make that the default behavior.  In general, easier said than done of course.  But in this case it's incredibly simple.

 

So you want users to only quote relevant text.  Make that the default functionality of the quote feature.  I'm not the first person to suggest that (even in the thread I saw from many years ago, it was suggested multiple times and completely ignored every time, while the straw man argument against excessive quoting kept being repeated like a broken record), but I will lay it out in even more detail so you can see how convenient it is.  1) User highlights text in a post on the forum.  2) A Quote button appears next to the highlighted text.  3) If the user clicks the Quote button, the currently highlighted text is formatted into the fully decorated quote format and appended to the user's current "Reply to this topic" text.

 

I definitely think precisely attributed quoting is an incredibly helpful tool for precise discussion, especially the detailed linguistic conversations for which this site was made.  I feel hindered by its absence, and I know I'm not the only one.

[imron]

Quote

that's probably because you designed it poorly,

I agree that I.P. board is poorly designed.  I have no control over that however, and using it was not my decision.

Quote

not because all your users happen to be dunderheads (especially on a site like this

It's mostly not the regular users who are the problem, it's all the dunderheads that visit from other parts of the Internet and who don't know better.

Quote

So you want users to only quote relevant text.  Make that the default functionality of the quote feature.

Which is not an available option (as far as I know) of the version of I.P. Board forum software we are using (see above about it being poorly designed).  Yes, the software could be modified to support it, but now you are talking about hours of work, not just to do the initial implementation but also to fix it up any time an upgrade occurs that breaks it.  If you can point to an existing I.P. Board plugin that has this exact functionality we might consider trying it out.

Quote

while the straw man argument against excessive quoting kept being repeated like a broken record

It's actually not a straw man.  It's something that is borne out of years of experience running the forums.  The functionality you mention doesn't exist out of the box, and what does exist is sub-optimal.  From time to time the default quoting reply feature is enabled and it always results in threads full of full quotes from previous replies, and so we disable it again.

Quote

I definitely think precisely attributed quoting is an incredibly helpful tool for precise discussion

It's actually not.  You are probably just used to it from other forums and so notice the difference here when writing posts, without actually considering the benefits it brings.  You mention you really like these forums and if any part of that is because the threads and posts feel relatively free of clutter, then you already appreciate this feature as a reader even though you might dislike it as a writer.

And that's the crux of the matter, in your post above you are coming from the point of view of optimising for writing posts, whereas we are optimising for reading posts - sometimes often years after they have been written.

When deprived of the default quote functionality, people end up structuring the discussion so that it doesn't need it, and that makes for a better reading experience months or years after the fact.  In times where being able to quote and reference a previous post is really, actually beneficial to the discussion, the tools are still there to do it with a bit of extra work.  And that's the tradeoff we have decided to make - a little bit more work for people writing posts in exchange for a much better, clutter reduced, reading experience.

[Apollys]

I appreciate your point about the work required, that's up to whoever is in charge to decide if it's worth their time or not.

 

Your final point is dead wrong.  As a writer, I don't care. I just paraphrase or don't include the reference at all (which makes the discussion less clear).  As a reader, though... that's exactly when I notice it.  An unattributed quote is basically useless (unless the discussion so far is very short), if it doesn't tell me where the quote came from I have to go scrolling through the discussion - often to previous pages - just to find the origin of the quote.  Or people roughly reference things that were said previously without quoting at all, because the appropriate functionality isn't there. Thus I'm left much less clear about the whole matter unless I wish to go back and read the entire discussion.  In an era in which we are bombarded with so much information from so many sources, efficiency of our own digestion of the information is nothing to scoff at.

 

It's rather futile to argue that attributed quoting is not beneficial compared to unattributed quoting.  It's literally providing more information (that I would argue as incredibly useful, but I don't even have to to make this point) in a non-invasive, non-distracting way without adding additional clutter or noise to the post.  But if you want to argue it's not beneficial enough to be worth the time, I won't debate that one with you; that's certainly not up to me to decide.

[Flickserve]

Why not just use the mobile version of forum software and do a quote there? That's what I do. Is the feature difficult to use?

Actually, I do quite appreciate the clean forum. I never actually thought about it before until reading Imron's post. Quotes do mess things up.

[Apollys]

That disables so many other features, I don't think it's worth it.  I could swap back and forth every time I wanted to quote someone, but I really don't think that's worth it either.  As before, I don't really care as a writer.  I care as a reader, but in order to fix the problem from a reader's standpoint that means everyone has to do that, not just me.  Which isn't happening.  Well, unless the feature itself is changed.  Which isn't happening.

 

To be honest if I really wanted to quote someone in the current UI, I would take a bit of a middle ground and use the standard quote feature, and then manually type in their name.  That costs me an extra second or two and in those circumstances could save other people a lot more time.  But for the most part, I'll just stick to paraphrasing.  I don't mean to make it into a bigger deal than it is.  I just wanted to address the fact that it is some sort of an issue and there is room for improvement (rather than just saying this is the best we can do given our philosophical views on the use of quoting on forums).

 

Edit: Testing

 

 

Why not just use the mobile version of forum software and do a quote there? That's what I do. Is the feature difficult to use?

Actually, I do quite appreciate the clean forum. I never actually thought about it before until reading Imron's post. Quotes do mess things up.

 

Okay, given that even the fully-decorated quotes don't reference the post number or hyperlink to the post, they really aren't much better than just typing in the name manually.  Looks like I'll stick with that for now.

[Apollys]

Oops.  Fail.

 

Perfect time to suggest a delete post button I guess.  (Surprised this forum package didn't come with one...)

[imron]

if it doesn't tell me where the quote came from I have to go scrolling through the discussion - often to previous pages

Now imagine from the perspective of someone coming to a thread, months or years after it was written, and who have already been reading it through from the beginning.  Each post flows clearly on to the next without the clutter of quoted replies getting in the way.

 

Perfect time to suggest a delete post button I guess.

Also removed due to abuse.  Nothing worse than coming across an interesting thread where the OP has decided to take his/her ball and go home and now half the posts are missing.

 

We prefer people to think before they post and to own their words.

[imron]

But for the most part, I'll just stick to paraphrasing.

And here we have concrete proof that removing an instant quote button causes people to structure the discussion so it doesn't need such a thing!  Excellent.  It's working precisely as intended

[Flickserve]

What Imron said. What bugs me more is that people go and edit their content days afterwards so there is nothing in the post.

[roddy]

Actually quite a timely post, as the upcoming upgrade should allow highlight-to-quote, so we'll see how that works. In all honesty I think you get a better read if people treat it like a conversation and refer to people and what they've said than just quoting them, but I'm probably as guilty as anyone else. 

[Lu]

I quite like the idea of highlight-to-quote. I'm happy with there not being a quote button, and when needed I just copy-paste and put quote tags around it, but it would be nice to have an attribution and a date added automatically.

 

I agree with Flickserve that it's highly annoying when people edit all the text out of their posts after the fact, but I suppose it's almost impossible to make that impossible. Apollys, if you make a double post or something like that, you can always request the moderators to remove it. Click the 'Report' link in the lower right corner of your post and write them (us) a note. You can also ask in-thread, but then it might not be seen.

[Flickserve]

Lu, it is definitely possible to stop people from editing their posts after a set time limit.

The disadvantage would be for those threads which try to collate a list of resources that need to be updated.

[imron]

vBulletin (which we used to use way back when) would track edits that admin could then undo if necessary.  I.P. Board unfortunately does not.

[roddy]

5 hours ago, imron said:

I.P. Board unfortunately does not

It does now. Also, see attached - highlight to quote. You can also do this multiple times to build up a large list of annoying microquotes.

[realmayo]

2 hours ago, roddy said:

It does now. Also, see attached - highlight to quote. You can also do this multiple times to build up a large list of annoying microquotes.

You can also now quote entire posts with a click, was that intentional?

[realmayo]

Gosh and there's weapon's grade quoting, Multiquote, too!

 

 

2 hours ago, roddy said:

It does now. Also, see attached - highlight to quote. You can also do this multiple times to build up a large list of annoying microquotes.

 

7 hours ago, imron said:

vBulletin (which we used to use way back when) would track edits that admin could then undo if necessary.  I.P. Board unfortunately does not.

 

7 hours ago, Flickserve said:

Lu, it is definitely possible to stop people from editing their posts after a set time limit.

The disadvantage would be for those threads which try to collate a list of resources that need to be updated.

 

9 hours ago, Lu said:

I quite like the idea of highlight-to-quote. I'm happy with there not being a quote button, and when needed I just copy-paste and put quote tags around it, but it would be nice to have an attribution and a date added automatically.

 

I agree with Flickserve that it's highly annoying when people edit all the text out of their posts after the fact, but I suppose it's almost impossible to make that impossible. Apollys, if you make a double post or something like that, you can always request the moderators to remove it. Click the 'Report' link in the lower right corner of your post and write them (us) a note. You can also ask in-thread, but then it might not be seen.

 

[roddy]

Weapons grade banning as well, for gratuitous quoting.

[roddy]

4 minutes ago, realmayo said:

You can also now quote entire posts with a click, was that intentional?

You mean with the quote link / button? I'm going to leave it where it is for now - the fewer changes I have to make the easier life is. If it gets overused we can look at it again.