Removed quote button and added alternative

[johu]

Since I think it impedes readability when large blocks of text is quoted to only add one comment I have now removed the quoting button.

Instead, you can select the text you actually want to quote and then a quote button pops up.

I've also limited the height of existing quotes for the same reason

EDIT: funny mouse video for testing or if you want to escape from boring videos

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

Hate this change. Hate this kind of thing. And who with a cell phone these days can select text? At least the old quote button sort of works for them too.

It might be better, but it's less intuitive, and at this point there's 25 years history of knowing what a quote button does. You have to gain big to benefit from changing something so standardized.

Also, when I tried it just now, with your post, it says "Information - The requested page could not be found", so, there's also that.

As with all change curmudgeons like me will complain at first, and then begrudgingly accept it later. Whether or not it's actually better or worse is independent of this.

[uhi22]

Indeed I can select text on android mobile, by long pressing at the text and moving the markers. But the quote button does not appear in this case. On the win10 with Edge, the quote button pops up when text is selected.

[johu]

Yes, doesn't work on mobile. What does work is clicking on Post Reply and then hitting the quote button in the topic review - preferably after selecting the sentence you want to quote.

Besides, am I the only one who is "triggered" by posts containing 50 lines of (pretty random) quote and 1 line of reply?

EDIT: multi quote button now works.

EDIT2:

It might be better, but it's less intuitive, and at this point there's 25 years history of knowing what a quote button does. You have to gain big to benefit from changing something so standardized.

Yes the intention is to break the habit and discourage thoughtless quoting. That said it is an experiment that I'm willing to take back if it causes to much disgruntling

[crasbe]

Besides, am I the only one who is "triggered" by posts containing 50 lines of (pretty random) quote and 1 line of reply?

No, but you are the admin and you can tell people to stop doing it when they do it
That usually works... eventually.

The Quote button works semi-well with Opera GX, since Opera GX opens a context menu when you select a text. Sometimes I have to close the context menu with Esc to access the Quote button, which is less than convenient.

[uhi22]

Besides, am I the only one who is "triggered" by posts containing 50 lines of (pretty random) quote and 1 line of reply?
...
Yes the intention is to break the habit and discourage thoughtless quoting.

No, you are not the only one. My dream would be some automatism to detect the quote ratio and reject or auto-shrink posts with massive quotes.

[RetroZero]

As with all change curmudgeons like me will complain at first, and then begrudgingly accept it later. Whether or not it's actually better or worse is independent of this.

Hear you, however there are many times where threads are too long.... don't get me starred on carbon footprint of resending data over and over either .
Just tired it on my phone and found the quote button pop up on the side of screen.

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

Besides, am I the only one who is "triggered" by posts containing 50 lines of (pretty random) quote and 1 line of reply?

When I was a kid, our elderly internet forefathers taught us manners and etiquette.

"Pretend it was paper and you were having to write it out by hand, that's how much you should be quoting. Quote only the essential and relevant sections, and break your comments up into sections replying in-line so everyone has context."

Well, a few months ago, a head of communications of a company I work with, who's now the general manager of the firm with, oh, $10,000,000 annual revenue (so small, but not insignificant, hundreds of ~$50k/year clients), called me out in a meeting for having incomprehensible emails.

And I was like, odd, I have superior email etiquette (at least structure-wise, not content wise, fuck 'em I speak my mind), to just about anyone.

She insists that she can't make heads or tails of who said what in my replies, and can't I just leave the entire conversation below and only add everything I write above that. Y 'know, like, if you knew nothing about email and just clicked "reply" on Gmail, and edited nothing.

I was like "Huh? Is that how everyone else is seeing it?" and most of the room nodded.

This person, hell, most of this room, had no idea what diamond/chevron/angle brackets are for or how they're used.

For example, if they saw this:

---
>> The Logo should be either blue or green.
> Our competition uses blue, so I guess green.

I'm fine with green as well, but keep it bright.
---

They'd just read it like I wrote 3 sentences and have no clue what it means.

Whereas, the structure of an email quote is so ingrained in me I obviously see a quote from 2 posts ago, a quote from 1 post ago, and my own comment as one line.



So not only were they not familiar with this, they couldn't understand it when I explained it to them. And when I explained contextual quoting. Even as a concept. No, they just want everyone to write anything they have to say at the top, and have no context on which part of earlier conversations that applies to.

And, WTF is the point of adding the entire conversation to the bottom of every message in the conversation. You already have the entire conversation as individual emails grouped above.

And this isn't some granny learning email for the first time. It's a 35 year old woman, in charge of corporation communications, that sends a hundred+ emails a day.

Oh, and this is a person who, when I write an email saying "I need the following pieces of information to proceed", and write 5 paragraphs describing exactly what's needed, I'll get an email back with 1 or 2 of them answered, and then never any followthrough. Like, no, I need all 5 of those answered, not just, generally start talking about things the email made you think about and stop when you feel like it.

So I just have to wait a few days and then say "I need these 3 things still" and repost the same paragraphs. As if it didn't exist at all the first time.

Internet culture has moved on and left me in the past.

[johu]

I see your point. Messengers like Signal or Whatsapp don't even allow editing a quote but they do show it more compact. That said a forum isn't quite comparable to email as you can click on a partial quote and it'll take you to the full original post. Also the quoting is more visually explicit than ">".

No, but you are the admin and you can tell people to stop doing it when they do it
That usually works... eventually.

Sorry, it hasn't I researched this before making the change and the basic verdict is, yes, if the community were static (which we don't want) eventually everyone would learn from a quick shoulder tap. But new members join everyday and it feels stupid to play "quote police" as reply to their very first post. One new member even full quoted this viewtopic.php?p=3#p3

No, you are not the only one. My dream would be some automatism to detect the quote ratio and reject or auto-shrink posts with massive quotes.

I sort of did this by limiting the height of quote DIVs

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

That said a forum isn't quite comparable to email as you can click on a partial quote and it'll take you to the full original post. Also the quoting is more visually explicit than ">".

Yeah, my point was just "People are idiots even on subjects where they are expected to not be idiots" and if change has to happen, it has to happen.

All the Vertical Scope forums soft-limit quotes ("read more") to like, 5 or 6 lines.

But new members join everyday and it feels stupid to play "quote police" as reply to their very first post.

But that's tradition!

"It looks like you're new to the internet. Here is how we expect you to behave."

I went through it, you went through it, we all got told how to act.

...

One thing I noticed, when I click the quote button, instead of quoting I now have to click on the little hover window in the bottom right to actually reply. Okay fine, so I click reply, I type my message like I do here. I click submit... and the stupid hover window is still there asking me to reply to the quote. So I have to click delete. 3 clicks instead of 1. Not intuitive either.

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

It might be better, but it's less intuitive, and at this point there's 25 years history of knowing what a quote button does. You have to gain big to benefit from changing something so standardized.

I have to agree with Matt here. I'm a member of other forums with various quoting capabilities and functionality, and the old way on this form was by far the easiest and most intuitive.

I get that long quotes are a problem, but I just don't think they're that much of a problem. What drives me nuts is quoting with photos. If there was a way to make it quote the way it used to, but remove images from the quote automatically, that would fix the bulk of my frustration.

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

And, WTF is the point of adding the entire conversation to the bottom of every message in the conversation. You already have the entire conversation as individual emails grouped above.

An old boss of mine preferred it because it created a much cleaner paper trail when something communicated over email ended up being important contractually. You just take the last email, and the entire conversation is there, rather than needing to hunt down every email and then prove they were actually the same thread and so on.

Now, that concern could have been alleviated if he would just write formal contracts on our template, but he had several clients that were friends and they'd quote and decide (low) 5-figure contracts in an email.

[arber333]

Hm... i cant decide on the verdict yet.
On one hand i thought the old quote system easier but probably only because i became used to it. In my defence i tried to modify my quotes many times for additional meaning, adding links and references in my response inline.

But the new way i have to get used to still. Especially to the annoying "quote" button appearing at oddest of times and places .
I imagine i should be getting used to it eventually.

Here is my suggestion. Why not simply add the quote button which would be fixed onto the tools frame to the right? As we would mark the text we would tap the quote which would put text into the reply window. Keep the old button but with new functionality. If we would just mash the quote button without selecting text nothing would happen.
Feel free to thrash me .

[muehlpower]

No, you are not the only one

I think it's good. Just tested here. In the past I have always deleted parts of the quote so that it is not so long and it is clear what I am responding to.

[johu]

One thing I noticed, when I click the quote button, instead of quoting I now have to click on the little hover window in the bottom right to actually reply. Okay fine, so I click reply, I type my message like I do here. I click submit... and the stupid hover window is still there asking me to reply to the quote. So I have to click delete. 3 clicks instead of 1. Not intuitive either.

Just fixed the too persistent little quote window. It was stored as a cookie, possibly forever. I have omitted that functionality so as soon as you navigate to another page it will forget the marked quotes

[johu]

So some weeks into the experiment, how do you get along now?

I think full quotes are reduced and personally I like the combination of quick reply and selection quoting

[arber333]

So some weeks into the experiment, how do you get along now?

I find the floating quote buton annoying. Can we make it fixed near the icons on the right side? TNX

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

So some weeks into the experiment, how do you get along now?

I don't mind abbreviated quoting. No one should really quote that long.

The quote button just jumping to the bottom right is a pain in the ass. And then having to close it again later.

I've never used the select then quote feature, I don't think anyone knows it exists so I don't see it as a benefit either.

Nothing worth having a crisis over, but, neither was it the way it was before.

[johu]

I hear you. Brought the "reply with quote" button back.

[arber333]

I hear you. Brought the "reply with quote" button back.

No! My idea was not to quote the complete posts. I would just need a quote button present and effective as long as some text would be captured.
It is damn inconvenient to handle free dancing quote button around posts . Can we fit that button to a predetermined place?

[johu]

Can we fit that button to a predetermined place?

Hmm, I'm not a super web developer so not sure. Maybe the normal quote button could be linked to take over the function of the dancing button will check later

[johu]

Ok, I butchered the plugin. The multiquote button has unintentionally disappeared. I can go search it.
The standard quote button acts like selection quote now. If nothing is selected you get a message.

Haha, discovered Firefox lets you do multiselection But then the quote just contains all selected parts in one

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

If nothing is selected you get a message.

Oh, hmm. I hate this.

Like, for example, if you try to quote right from the start of someone's post, but you're off by a few pixels, then it starts selecting their avatar and the stuff in the left column, or the title, instead of just the start of the text in the post.

For my own use, I prefer the quote button to just quote all, as I manually trim it.

This makes it harder for me, but forces lazy people to at least select what they're quoting.

However, it's worse in some ways because now they'll only quote one bit, or over quote, instead of learning to break replies up into multiple quotes.

I think the best compromise is to leave the quote button the way it was (to quote whole message), but if someone's dumb enough to just leave the entire post there, have it auto-condense it so it doesn't bloat the thread.

Maybe second best compromise is a second button that selectively quotes. A "selection quote" vs. "quote all". But now you have to teach people what two mystery meat navigation buttons mean instead of just one.

*shrugs*

It's not the end of the world but I definitely don't like it like this. I think it's worse than having the floating quoter bubble and extra clicks.

[johu]

Oh, hmm. I hate this.

Like, for example, if you try to quote right from the start of someone's post, but you're off by a few pixels, then it starts selecting their avatar and the stuff in the left column, or the title, instead of just the start of the text in the post.

For my own use, I prefer the quote button to just quote all, as I manually trim it.

This makes it harder for me, but forces lazy people to at least select what they're quoting.

However, it's worse in some ways because now they'll only quote one bit, or over quote, instead of learning to break replies up into multiple quotes.

I think the best compromise is to leave the quote button the way it was (to quote whole message), but if someone's dumb enough to just leave the entire post there, have it auto-condense it so it doesn't bloat the thread.

Maybe second best compromise is a second button that selectively quotes. A "selection quote" vs. "quote all". But now you have to teach people what two mystery meat navigation buttons mean instead of just one.

*shrugs*

It's not the end of the world but I definitely don't like it like this. I think it's worse than having the floating quoter bubble and extra clicks.

Lets try that.

[f0ld]

Well I am late to the party as usual. (was absent to the forum for a few weeks because of exam period but have noticed the quote changes when I quickly looked in the forum.

So here are my 2 cents:

1. It might be one of the numerous plugins I have installed in my browser but if somebody quotes a large post in a thread it automatically scales into a smaller window with its own scroll bar within the post. Thats why I personally dont mind somebody fully quoting a post.

2. Personally I am a heavy user of quote features. I try to break it down into multiple quotes with answers but that is not always possible (since it doesnt always make sense). When I break it down into multiple quotes and only the relevant text I usally modify the "code" in the editor anyways. So now I just mark everything and break it down from there. With the previous system it was one step less but I dont mind it if it benefits the majority of the users...

3. I am really offended by the "floating" quote button that appears randomly if I select text. I might be the only person (and/or it might be related to adhd) but I have this weird habit of marking text passages that I am reading. I find myself constantly "accidentally" landing in a quoted reply post at the bottem because the button appeared and I clicked on it out of accident.
I am at a point where I am considering blocking this button with one of my installed plugins because it is just annoying the heck out of me...