Attention Block quoting posts

Bro, why not have it so that when one clicks 'quote' only the header saying 'Brogan said' is quoted with an empty text field, one could then leave it empty as it would force the reader to click the arrow to be sent to the post itself

Also it would then force posters to learn quickly how to copy and paste relevant sections if hey wanted to paste into the empty field

You could even be cool and have it say 'What Brogan said' with the arrow and no text field
 
jez101 said:
It is very difficult to block edit on smartphones.
Click to expand
I wasn't aware of that.
That seems like a fairly major limitation of the smartphone browser if that's the case.

I have also not posted at least twice in the last 24hrs because the quote is now disabled. I don't understand how to use the function without the quote button.
Click to expand
That's regrettable but I was left with little choice after posting no less than four times yesterday asking people not to quote whole posts just to respond with a few words.
As is usually the case, most people take no notice until you force them to.

Cookinflatsix said:
Bro, why not have it so that when one clicks 'quote' only the header saying 'Brogan said' is quoted with an empty text field, one could then leave it empty as it would force the reader to click the arrow to be sent to the post itself
Click to expand
I believe that would make the quote function more or less useless as when responding to a specific point in a large post, it wouldn't be immediately clear which one it was.

So just to clarify, the quote function will be returning soon, I just want to try and educate people how it is best used.
Some threads have almost as much duplicated quote content as actual content, which is what we're trying to reduce.
 
Ok, but that was on a thread with Hamilton in the title and we know that common sense is normally thrown out of the window when entering one or those ;)
 
I think the Example Bro has given is a perfect way of reminding people of the "like" button. If you agree with a point someone has made just click that, you don't need to post the whole bloody thing again.
 
There is another technical reason for wanting to cut down on the amount of quoted content, which is related to the database size.

The search index is an exact duplication of the post table so in the case of the post above, Fenderman's original comment is actually stored in the database four times, once as the original post, once as the quote and then that is duplicated in the search table.

When we migrated to the current software, the old database was 31MB and that was with 33,000 posts.
Although the structure is different, which accounts for some of the size increase, we are now on 118,000 posts and the database size is 235MB.
So although the posts have increased by just over a factor of 3.5, the DB size has increased by a factor of 7.5.

As we are still on shared hosting, this is starting to put our available resources under considerable strain.
 
I find mass-quoting makes many threads damned-near impossible to read, as I grow bored constantly re-reading content I've read once already.

In the absence of the "quote" function, why don't we all go back to the use of quotation marks and selecting the phrase to which we wish to allude, instead of lazily cutting/pasting whole paragraphs for the reader to slog through to find your point?

For example, there is the database limit mentioned by Brogan which is clogged up by "Fenderman's comment being stored four times", which is precisely the point of this thread and the temporary removal of the quote function.

I suggest the function be withheld for the foreseeable future, to see if we can learn some better habits instead...
 
And, if you want to highlight a quote, there are facilities to bold text, underline (although I'm not a fan of that as it comes across as a bit shouty), change the font colour or change its size. I do like the fact that if someone quotes your post you get a notification though - that said, it still gives this even if you only partially quote something.
 
Don't get me wrong, I do think the quote function with the attribution is a very useful feature.

I just think it has become very over-used and I suspect (a significant) part of the reason for that is the Alert feature.
 
I believe that would make the quote function more or less useless as when responding to a specific point in a large post, it wouldn't be immediately clear which one it was.
Click to expand

What I mean is someone sees a point in a post or a post they want to respond to, so they click 'quote' and get an empty text box and the arrow linkng to the first post

If the responder wants to comment on a small aspect of the first post they are forced to cut and paste the pertinent part, if its the whole post they leave it empty as that forces the reader whos interested to click the arrow and end up reading the first post

I really think that would solve your resource worry as well as force posters to sharpen up with responses
 
That would involve changing the base code, which I am reluctant to do.

I also think it would make the quote function less useful and would probably result in lots of posts with empty quote boxes.

Really all that's required is for people to click the quote link (when appropriate) and then trim anysuperfluous text, although I acknowledge that the limitations related to mobile browsers may make this problematic.

Hopefully this thread has highlighted the issue and we can reimplement the feature as is.
 
The feature has now been restored and from this point on the moderators will have a quiet word with anyone if required.

Hopefully the user experience will be improved without the need to remove such a vital and useful function.
 
It's likely that some are using the quote system to alert members.
If that is the case, it is possible to alert someone by including an empty quote in the post.

Click on the Quote link and remove all the content between the tags, like so:
Code: 
[quote="FB, post: 122943, member: 120"][/quote]


The member will be alerted but the quote won't actually appear in the post, as is the case with this one.
 
Fantastic idea for a feature request.

A "mention" feature.

Similar to facebook's. Where if you start typing a user's name it suggests users so that you may reference or "tag" them in the post. This would result in a link to the users mini-profile and would also alert the mentioned user.

Mike, you there? :)
 


Well, if it's stable it may give your database a bit of respite. I'm going to have to get myself an installation of this forum to play with. Marvellous bit of software.
 
I'm just testing it now and it seems to work fine.

Tell you what I'll do, I'll install it and we can see how it goes.
If it interferes with anything else then I'll just remove it.
 

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