I see it all the time here and I find it rude, especially when the OP is lengthy, well thought-out and covers a lot of ground. Whenever I see replies to such a post that include one sentence of such an OP, I can’t help but think that the interlocutor is a sniping asshole.
How about you? Am I being overly sensitive?
Nope 
Not really. A lot of my posts in the Game Room will have my comments on several teams. If I post comments about 3 NBA teams and someone only wants to comment on one team, I don’t mind if they only quote the portion of post which deals with that specific team.
Seems to me that’s pretty standard practice. If I am replying to a particular point in a post and don’t have anything to say about the rest, I usually trim it down to the part that is relevant to my reply (particularly when the post I am replying to is lengthy). I consider that a courtesy to everyone else wading through the thread. Why do you want to see your entire OP repeated unnecessarily?
I personally hate it when someone quotes a really long post just to support or refute a small part of it–especially if the part they are responding to is deep in the middle of the quote. I just read that whole long post earlier in the thread. I don’t want to have to read it all over again to figure out what, specifically, the quoting poster is responding to.
People snip my posts all the time and it’s always to respond to just one of the points that I made. It has never bothered me.
It’s generally considered bad netiquette to quote an entire post to make a comment about one part of it. The quote should be the smallest portion of the post which provides the proper context for the reply, so that a reader can see what the reply is referring to. Sometimes that means that you quote one sentence out of dozens.
It’s rude to quote someone out of context (though it can be amusing). It’s also rude to alter a quote (FYP - Fixed Your Post). But I’ve never before seen it suggested that any cropping of a quote is rude. Imagine if everyone fully quoted every post they replied to.
I MUCH prefer cropping to seeing the whole OP again.
I don’t know. I’ve always taken it as, “I’m dismissing everything else you right, because it’s irrelevant, and I’m just going to harp on this one sentence.”
I prefer cropping for brevity and relevance. It’s truly annoying when you see an entire lengthy post quoted (sometimes in the very next post) and then there’s a one-line reply below. Cropping doesn’t mean I’m dismissing everything else–I may be complete agreement with the whole thing–it means I’m trying to stay on topic and get rid of unnecessary clutter. I dislike blinky avatars and huge image-laden sigs for the same reason.
IOW, what Gus Gusterson said.
No way. Like everyone else said, I prefer not to see a complete re-post of something if they are just replying to one bit.
I think quoting an entire post and commenting with one or two sentences is rude. Honestly - do you think everyone needs to reread the entire 8 paragraph transcription to put your 2 sentence rebuttal/agreement in proper context?
You have to get used to that. The fact that a post or part of a post doesn’t get a response doesn’t mean that nobody read it or that nobody appreciated it. If it helps, imagine that there are dozens of people nodding in agreement as they read your “lengthy, well thought-out” posts.
Not mine, man. Nothing I write is lengthy or well thought-out.
I have to throw my hat in with the rest. I would rather not see a lengthy post quoted, just to have a few key pieces responded to.
However, I do think that it’s not doing anyone a favor when what is quoted is so obscure as to obliterate the true context or meaning behind it.
I try to make sure it’s a complete thought I’m quoting & responding to - not just a phrase.
If I was King it’s be impossible to quote whole posts, only snippets. For reasons so ably explained by the several folks above.
I suppose it does matter a bit which fourm we’re discussing. In the Pit it would not be unusual for somebody to snip out a misleading sound-bite to harp on, destroying rather than setting context. And that would be evil & out of place in, say, IMHO.
slight hijack …
What I really dislike are those posts which turn into a phrase-by-phrase rebuttal of some previous post which quickly degenerates into the two posters arguing about how the other person misunderstood their point. No, *you *misunderstood *my *points. No you did!! Mommmmm!!!
Sorry, dude, but you’re overreacting. The person is quoting only one part because that’s the part they want to comment (not necessarily “harp”) on. Leaving out the rest most likely just means that they have no comment on it, not that they’re dissing it.
Please reread what everyone else has written and consider changing your attitude about this. It’s really just standard netiquette.
I prefer it, on another forum I’m on it’s actually a minor moderatable offense to quote an entire post and only respond to part of it because it clogs up the thread so much with unnecessary text.
nevermind
90% of the time, I prefer it when my post is cropped in a response. It only bothers me when their response to what they quoted was addressed in the part they cropped, or when I make several arguments for a position, and the other poster only responds to one of them, then acts like they’ve rebutted the entire position.
I get much more annoyed when people quote a lengthy post and only respond to a small section of it. If I wanted to read the entire post, I’d go back and read it myself when it first appeared! As long as people aren’t actively chopping quotes up and changing their meaning, I’d prefer it if people just quoted the part of the message they are replying to…