Aspenglow's moderation..[Rules about quotes][Note - Title edited]

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1

In post number 4556 of this thread a poster named enipla wrote

and I responded (in post #4564)

Don’t forget that there is one, and only one thing which matters much more than anything in this list:
It matters ONLY that …

And then Aspenglow gave me a severe threat of a warning,
“Do not ever, ever alter the quote(s) of another poster within the quote box. This is a strict rule on the SDMB.”

And now I’m confused.
What did I do wrong?

Every word I quoted is exact. Obviously, I shortened enipla’s sentences, but I did not change the context or content.
Enipla offered four items that “do not matter”,and one that does matter.
And I responded by saying, “No, there is only one thing that matters”, and it is not the one which you propose.

The point of my post is not to discuss the specifics of the 4 issues which enipla raised. My point is only to say that I disagree with those 4, and I propose a new and more important issue which matters.

So I quoted the relevant parts of enipla’s sentences in the quote box.

Now—you’re wondering–what has this got to do with Martin Luther King?
Well, let’s suppose that the internet existed in 1963, and MLK was here among us as a member of this site…
And let’s imagine that in 1963 I am a profound and wise philosopher. And I want to reply to MLK’s most famous post—using the same format which I used to respond to enipla’s post.
I would put in the quote box:

And then maybe I would say : “No Mr. King, I propose a better dream”

In this example, I would be quoting the relevant part of each of MLK’s sentences. (just as I quoted the relevant parts of enipla’s post.

Would I get a warning from aspenglow telling me “don’t ever ever change something in the quote box”.??
After all, Martin Luther King didn’t say “I have a dream”; He completed each of the sentences, with a full paragraph , giving a different example each time…

But showing the completed paragraphs following those sentences is not necessary for the point I want to make in my imaginary post saying “no, Mr. King, I propose a better dream”. My point would be to expound on my better dream.

What’s wrong with accurately quoting the relevant part of another Doper’s post, as long as I don’t misrepresent anything about its meaning?

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We’re allowed to selectively quote people to react to part of what a person said, in fact Discourse sometimes doesn’t even let us quote an entire post. But you cut out so much context that you turned the quote into nonsense. That runs afoul of our rules about misrepresenting what someone said.

3

Directly from the Rules.

If you’d used “…” or “(snip)” or something, it would have been better. But your straight alteration in a naked quote box, causing text to be attributed to another poster that they did not write, is a bright line violation of a clearly stated rule.

4

It was a mod note, not a warning.

However, I agree with you. Snipping a post for length is acceptable. The rule is against changing someone’s quote in a way that deliberately alters their intended meaning.

I do not think your snips altered the meaning.

For future reference, when you edit for length you should indicate the edit with “…” or “[snip]”

5

You could, also, have removed the attribution.

vs

and ideally state that it was a paraphrase, rather than a direct quote.

6

Okay. I’ll be more careful , and use “snip” .

7

Yes, you would.

8

The rule pertaining to quotation of off-board individuals appears to be less stringent and specific than the rule for quoting what a board member actually posted in a thread, so I think you’d perhaps get more leeway with abridgment or truncation of quoting famous non-SDMB people, unless it was clear the alterations were done to misquote or mislead.

So for example (and IANAMod so take this with a pinch of salt), I don’t think anyone would be overly concerned if you quoted, from memory, Willy Wonka as having said “I said GOOD DAY sir!”. Someone (maybe a whole load of people) might correct your memory of the line (because the line does not appear in that exact form in the movie), but I don’t reckon it would be quite the same thing as if you use the quote function on a thing another SDMB member said, then just alter the quoted text without ellipses or markup to indicate the reason for the alteration.

9

When the moderation was clearly about taking more care to avoid any risk of misrepresentation in a direct quote, what traction do you think you are going to get by starting an ATMB thread that further misrepresents what happened?

Your thread title claims that you were not warned (you were not), and implies that the moderation was for quoting MLK (it was not).

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I disagree. It made the meaning of the quoted part completely unintelligible, thereby undercutting the function of the quote function. I had no idea what the first poster had said and had to go back to that post before I understood what @chappachula was getting at.

Putting “snip” wouldn’t have helped.

“snip” is when the post being quoted from is long and you just want to comment on one part of it. You still don’t alter the text that you’re quoting and commenting on, but just use “snip” to show you’re only quoting part of the first post.

Here, even if chappachula had put “snip” in each of the lines, it still would have been impossible to understand without going back to the post being quoted.

And, chappachula wasn’t told they can’t quote from MLK, so I’ve got no idea why that’s in this thread title.

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I actually flagged the OP. The title is really misleading. I get the first part might just be carelessness.

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Sorry about that.
Typing “severe threat of warning” seemed too long for a title, so I shortened it.to “warning”. Yes, it’s careless, but I didn’t think it was an important issue.

As for the Martin Luther King reference, after typing it I realized it didn’t say what I wanted exactly. I had wanted to say something similar to “why can’t I speak like MLK in a quote”. But it was too late, and there’s no way to edit a thread title.
So, yes, it’s a little misleading. Again, sorry 'bout that. But the answers in the course of the thread make my title relevant…My first post does contain direct quotes from MLK, and the following posts explain to me why I can’t quote him that way. So I learned my lesson.

13

Well, it was perfectly plain to me.

@enipla gave a list of things that don’t matter from a legal standpoint

@chappachula reduced it to:

  • it does not matter if …
  • it does not matter if …
  • it does not matter if …

And then @chappachula made a comment about a thing that does matter.

Here’s the meaning I saw in the quote:
enipla has given a list of things that don’t matter. I acknowledge the list. I do not dispute the statement that they don’t matter. I see no need to quote the list in full because I am not disputing it.

14

Thank you Peter_Morris!
You understood me perfectly.
So even if I get a spanking from the mods and a bunch of other Dopers, at least I know I’m not completely off-base.

15

Peter Morris included the standard editing punctuation of “…”. That would have made it clear you were quoting only part of the post. It’s not that hard an ask to be clear and unambiguous when you shorten quotes.

16

Yeah, I’m learning that.

17

I agree. And a mod note saying so would have been appropriate.

But the actual mod note treated him as if he were being deliberately dishonest, and that was wrong.

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OP joined in 2002. They should not need individual coaching on the acceptable ways to abbreviate quoted posts. This has always been a strict rule on here.

Unless there’s another mod note I’m missing, the one I see just stated the facts. If the mod thought there were deliberate dishonesty involved, I’m pretty sure there would have been a warning.

19

That is very accurate and seems very obvious.

20

This part is very true. A warning was fully justifiable, a sternly worded mod note is if anything is merciful.

I wanted to bring up (to me) a key reason why it’s so important, and why I much prefer [snip] to an ellipses. Lots of people, myself included, use the latter as a pause, while snip is much more clear in terms of when a third party edits a prior post.

The reason IMHO that it’s so important to not modify another poster’s quote is that despite many complaints, and tons of people who should know better, there are a ton of us who jump into a thread (or return to a thread) dozens or even hundreds of posts later. They may NEVER have read the original, and only see the modified version. That’s an epic disservice to the poster quoted in terms of accurately understanding their point.

Just my $0.02.