You won’t, if you:
I believe
I don’t see this as even remotely strange.
Because people aren’t bothering to learn how the board works.
Virtually all of the time, yes. I’ve quoted the entirety of immediately preceding posts a couple of times and the system let them stay for some reason. Surprised the hell out of me.
Maybe there was a hidden character that didn’t get quoted so the system saw an incomplete quote.
What you do is to click on “Reply” on the post as normal. Then you highlight and quote the post as necessary. If you quoted the entire post after clicking on “Reply”, then the entire post will show up. If you merely quoted the entire post, without bothering to click on “Reply”, then nothing shows up.
My issue is often that without the little indicator, I don’t know if the person is replying to the previous post or or replying in general, but maybe they’re going off on a bit of a tangent based on what I said.
It creates a lot of ‘is that directed at me?’ type posts.
@codinghorror many of the issues we’ve brought up are met with some resistance from you, which is understandable and not a problem. But telling us that we’re in the wrong and that somehow learning how to do things your way will serve us both on and off line comes off as a bit condescending.
Don’t be shy, tell us, because we don’t know.
Unless there’s some good reason, highlighting the entire post and hitting quote vs hitting reply and then quoting the entire post should do the same thing, whether you’re doing this to the previous post or a post up further. For them to do otherwise, would generally be considered a bug that needs fixing.
Great! Now they’re gonna fix the bug and you won’t be able quote an entire post unless you jump through some other stupid hoops like adding a nonprintable character.
If I’m typing a reply to the very last post, but – before I post it – other unrelated posts (ie, in response to the OP, to other posts, or simply new content) are added to a thread – will the software then quote the post to which I’m replying, or otherwise indicate to which post I’m replying ?
A minimal example to make things clearer:
Alice starts a new thread, with a post that says “Kindergarten Cop is the greatest movie ever made!”.
Bob replies to the thread to say “No it’s not; True Lies was way better.”.
Carol then hits “reply” on one of those posts to say “I agree; Schwarzenegger’s performance was hilarious.”.
With which post was Carol agreeing? She communicated it clearly, by clicking the “reply” button to the post she agreed with (because clearly, that’s the purpose of the “reply” button, right?). But we, the reader, are left wondering “Should we assume that it was the OP, because replies to the OP aren’t marked as such? Or should we assume that it was the last post, because replies to the last post aren’t marked a such?”.
The software is set up with the assumption that most replies are replies to the OP, and so don’t need to be marked as replies… but it’s also set up with the assumption that most replies are replies to the most recent post, and so don’t need to be marked as replies. But even if one of those assumptions is true, they definitely can’t both be true.
And that’s all assuming the person even hit the reply button on the post and didn’t just use the reply button at the bottom. Because they weren’t directly replying to anyone. It was just a general post. It’s how we end up with those ‘wait, was that directed at me’ replies.
To be fair, fixing the bug would mean more of ‘post exactly what I want posted’ and less ‘post what you think I want posted’. If I quote an entire post, I’d like that to be part of what shows up when I hit the button.
Similarly, it drives me bonkers that it gets rid of multiple blank spaces between lines.
One blank line above this.
Two blank lines above this.
Three blank lines above this
Four blank lines above this.
But I’m sure when I hit ‘reply’ they’ll each be separated by a single blank line.
edit, yup
Sorry, I can’t be bothered.
Completely agree with this thread’s critique and I have felt the same frustration. If it’s happening to multiple people, somewhat frequently, the suggestion that we just don’t use the board well enough or the right way is not helpful.
It’s up there with threads disappearing from the new/latest list because the presumption was that why would you want to quickly revisit a thread you didn’t post to? As with this, too often the explanation for some quirk of the software relies on how people should want to use the boards, and not acknowledging or accommodating how people might want to use them.
Do it …
… like this.
Note that she’s quoting herself there, not me. (Well, technically she’s quoting my quotation of her post, but it doesn’t show that way.)
And what I meant by “not necessarily” was that I did not alter the post I was quoting (her #7 in my #8) in any way.
If a member goes to the effort of quoting the full text of the preceding post, why not show the reply indicator at the top right of the post?
(Normally the reply indicator is hidden when a post replies to the previous post.)
Use case:
Topic: “Declawing cats is inhumane, right?”
Post #1: “I think it is wrong to declaw cats.”
Post#2: “there are good reasons to declaw cats…”
Post#3: “I agree.” (Tried to quote #2 but quoted text and reply indicator are removed)
Post 4: “Agree with who?”
~Max
I agree with that. When you’re replying to the immediately preceding post, quoting it in full just bloats the thread.
But see my next post.
Here I’m replying to the same earlier post without quoting you. And even though I have not quoted you, there is a link to you and your post at the top right to show who and what I’m responding to.
BUT if this were a reply quoting the immediately preceding post, the software deletes the superfluous quoted text but does NOT show that link. That’s the thing that I think should be fixed. When the software deletes superfluous quoting of the immediately preceding post, it should put that link in there instead - it avoids the bloat, while removing any possible ambiguity about what a post is responding to.
Here I’m reply to my own immediately preceding post using the reply button immediately above here and not quoting myself - and again that link is not present, creating uncertainty about who the reply is directed to for anyone not intimately familiar with the somewhat unintuitive way the software behaves when you hit the reply button. Since that link does not take up any space, it should always be generated when you hit the reply button.
I generated this one by hitting the reply button to the OP. This again has no link at top right. So (to demonstrate the OP’s point) a reply to the OP is indistinguishable from a reply to the immediately preceding post.
All excellent examples. Just including the reply arrow in all cases seems like the right solution.
Sorry for double post, but I just came across this example in the wild
Is the comment “I hope so” referring to the post above, where the poster says they would have worded a comment more clearly if they realized it could have been misinterpreted, and then moving on to a related topic? Or is “I hope so” in reference to the OP asking if sanitizer can be refilled from a larger bottle?
I’m guessing the latter, but why do I have to guess, when the solution (the reply indicator) is an easy way to be clear?
Glad to be used as an example. Don’t think I would have seen this thread if it hadn’t been linked off my post.
Anyway, I do agree that this occasionally causes unnecessary confusion. You can usually work out who the reply is to, but not always, and why allow ambiguity where none is necessary?
If I’m replying directly to the post immediately above mine, I use ^^^ .