If you quote a post that includes a numbered list, it is turned into a bullet point list in the reply.
- something
- something else
- and another thing
It becomes this:
That’s because you didn’t include the list title in the quote. It could be fixed, but just include some text before the list if you want the numbering. It’s barely worth the trouble to change when there’s a work-around. It could even be considered to be working according to the way a numbered list structure is defined, said many a programmer with more important things to do.
- UniPolar
- BiPolar
- TriPolar
What if there is no text above the list to quote? Then you’re still screwed.
(But thanks for the workaround.)
Same problem really, the text doesn’t carry the context of a numbered list. You can add a title but would have to note that you made a modification to the original quote.
It only takes a few extra clicks to work around it. But it should be much easier to deal with than this.
To make it easier you can transition through the rarely seen numbered bulleted list:
I really don’t understand why it cares if a list has a title or not. Is this another ‘feature’ that we have to spend extra time and effort to circumvent?
I tried adding a fake title but it didn’t help. The damage is done when you click the quote button.
On the other hand, if there is text above the list then you can quote it and then delete it afterwards. 
The copied text doesn’t contain anything distinguishing it from a bulleted list. Apparently given some title text it decides it’s a numbered list instead of bulleted.
This shows what is copied from a numbered list when you quote it. Nothing indicates that it is a numbered list. Quoting the same list with bullets would produce the same text. When there is some text before the first bullet it then assumes the list is to be formatted with numbers. Without that text it assumes it is a bulleted list. If you highlight the bulleted list and click the numbered list icon it will add the numbers, but retain the bullets also. I don’t know why some other character(s) are not used to indicate numbered items instead of the ‘*’ used for bullets.
(Note: bullets are shown as stars in the unformatted text)
Fake title
- Uni
- Bi
- Tri…
Nope, didn’t decide it was a numbered list. Why not * gasp * copy what’s there, instead of trying to be clever and screwing it up?
I believe this has to do with how you quote. If you quote clicking reply and then clicking the quote button at the top left of the text box (which looks like a word balloon) to quote the entire post, you get the full formatting.
But if you highlight and quote, the system has trouble reading the exact formatting, and it can get messed up. I’ve noticed other things getting lost when quoting that way.
This is one reason why I mostly only use the highlight-and-quote for small bits of plain text. For longer stuff, I use the reply-then-quote-all method, and then delete the parts I don’t need.
But, yeah, it would be nice if the software could read the highlighted formatting better.
I just had a go, and it does seem to work correctly if you use the quote button, for both @SCAdian’s and my examples. Useful to know.
I usually use the highlight and quote, and only quote short pieces. It’s a holdover from when I used to post on a forum with low character limits, so we all tried to minimise quoting to only the essential points. I’m trying to break the habit since it annoys some people here, but even so I usually prefer to reply to a paragraph at a time, and so far as I know there’s no easy way to break it up into separate quotes if you use the quote button.
I still use the method we used on vBulletin: I quote the post, then add my own [/quote] and [quote] tags between the paragraphs and my replies.
Though I do also try to respond more to whole posts than even individual paragraphs, as possible. I just quote small portions of the post to highlight the main part I’m replying to, like I did with your post.
Not having to do that is one of the great improvements of Discourse over vBulletin, IMO. Highlight and quoting is so much easier.
We’re not all so good at writing long essays on command. 
Yes, this does look like a minor bug – if you quote only the list, it doesn’t retain the list type. It assumes an unordered list.
Updating a year later: This issue appears to be partially fixed. But if you quote only part of a list, the formatting is still mangled. For instance, in the current thread on the Emancipation Proclamation, post #3 by @Johnny_Bravo starts with a numbered list from 1 to 3:
In the next post, @DrDeth quotes the last item in the list and the following text:
The quote still puts a number before the last item in the list, but the number is now 1, instead of 3, which is clearly incorrect: It makes it look like @DrDeth is replying to the first item on the list, which he is not.
Oh, and since typing this out, I noticed yet another bug: The quick-view box you get from a link to the posts strips out the list formatting entirely. You’ll have to click the links to see what’s happening.