Someone else mentioned wanting to make this inquiry, but he must have gotten distracted, so I’ll do it. I’m posting from my phone and links are not really an option. I thank everyone in advance for your understanding and indulgence.
In the Pit, there is a thread, begun by Charlie Wayne; the thread title has Donald Rumsfeld comparing President Obama’s performance unfavorably to that of a putative trained ape. In this thread, magellan01 received a warning for “changing the text within a quote box.”
However, in the offending post, magellan01 was scrupulous about removing the name of the poster with whose words he had tampered; in addition, there was no link back to the actual post he was “fixing.”
It has always been my observation and understanding that “Fixed That For You” posts were only violations if they included the “Originally posted by” verbiage. If I am correct in this understanding, the warning should be rescinded.
Now, it’s possible that my understanding is faulty, and the reason I’ve never seen it invoked om a post like magellan01’s before is because no one has ever reported one as a violation before (in a thread I’ve been following, anyway). This suggests that, even if my belief about the interpretation of the rule is wrong, at least it is widespread. Hence my request for clarification.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.
My recollection of the discussion (and it was some years ago) is that you cannot change a poster’s words in the quote box, period. If I recall correctly, something like this would have been OK:
*I fixed your comment:
“If you pit someone or comment on something on this board criticizing something on the left, you had best have your shit together.”*
That’s what I thought too - under what circumstances would it be honest to try to pretend or imply someone said something they clearly didn’t?
I guess there are cases where you need to say “you stated X, but that surely also means/implies Y” - but in those cases, there’s an explanation or a chain of logic, not just “Here’s what you said”.
It’s not(or shouldn’t be) about quote boxes though. The rule is in place so as to not make it seem as though someone is saying something they didn’t. In this case, the quote box was
without any reference to who had originally made the statement, or the post in which it was made. As such, I think the warning is incorrect.
In fact, Bryan Ekers has dug up the rule about altering quotes, and it specifically says "This does not apply to parodies to which no name is attached. "
I’d say Magellan made it pretty obvious that the text inside the quote box was a parody, and he removed the poster’s name from it.
Yeah, the former’s in quote marks while the latter’s in a box.
I’m not sure why this board thinks there’s something magical about the quote boxes. Misattribution is misattribution regardless of how you’re setting off the quotes.
I was surprised to see the warning, and think it ought to be rescinded in this case because of the ambiguity in the rule— which hopefully will no longer be ambiguous.
Only to those who don’t think there should be one. I would like to think that there is a way to keep at least one avenue of quotation free from fudgery.
What ambiguity? Don’t change the meaning of things within a quote box-it seems pretty simple to me. You are still free to play word games with stuff in quotation marks.
Right. Agree or disagree with the rule, but it’s not ambiguous.
Personally, I like the rule. There are other ways to make your point by playing with quotes. But adding situations where messing with quote box quotes is ok, you’re now making the rule ambiguous.
I have frequently posted with two quote boxes, where the first includes the original, unedited and attributed language, and the “I fixed that” one appears below. Like this:
[QUOTE=Me]
[QUOTE=Fictional Poster]
I am especially proud.
[/QUOTE]
Fixed that for you:
[QUOTE=Fictional Poster]
I am special.
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
I have also seen dozens of other posters do it that way, with nary a warning. The rule itself may not be ambiguous, but the enforcement of it has created lots.
Isn’t not changing quotes the standard? Pretty sure it’s what I was taught to do in school.
When you see FTFY stuff on other websites, it’s because that community has figured out the difference between a joke and a quote. I still hold out hope that someday the SDMB will get there too.
Not quite. By referring to it as “your comment” he was linking the boxed quote to the original poster, even if not by name. He was kind of dancing around the rules. And for no real reason, since he could have made the same point without breaking a rule if he’d used quote marks instead of a box.
As a current moderator, I consider anything treated as a quote to be a quote – I make no distinction between quotation mark and a quote box. Quotes is quotes.
And yes, it is my understanding that parody “quotes” clearly treated as parodies are not considered to be subject to our no-changes rule.