Adding context in brackets, and then mentioning it, is normally perfectly acceptable when quoting material elsewhere. Otherwise, a reader would have no idea what SA was referring to. The original quote was:
(bolding added, hopefully that’s OK)
What does the second “that” refer to? Well, in the context of the conversation, it refers to:
The alternative would be, in order for LHoD to keep the casual thread follower informed, to have SA’s quote, followed with, “where you’re referring to Trump being an egotistical, self-aggrandizing narcissist”, which would be much less clear to the casual reader.
We’re allowed to use ellipses in quotes, as long as it doesn’t change the meaning. Brackets are typically allowed as well, in other places, and LHoD wasn’t trying to change the meaning either, just keeping it clear what SA was referring to, without requiring all readers to track back the entire conversation.
I don’t know whether it’s technically warnable, as that depends on SDMB rules.
But FWIW, I don’t think LHOD did anything wrong or misleading in that post. He used brackets, made clear that he was adding the bracketed text, and the text in those brackets was accurate (in that it was in the quote that SA was responding to).
Again, if there’s well-established precedent that this is against the rules, then that’s warnable by definition. But if there’s some ambiguity here, I don’t think this should be warned, as it didn’t violate the spirit of the rule at all.
He didn’t alter anything, any more than journalists using brackets to explain a reference that isn’t self-evident in the quote is altering a quote.
This is a bad warning – what LHOD did was purely to make it clear what the quote actually meant.
If the rule is that nothing inside a quote box can ever be changed, then it’s both poorly applied (since I see “bolding added”, or similar, all the time) and a bad rule. The intent of the rule is obviously to prevent people from misattributing statements to other posters, and this didn’t do that.
Here’s the thing. Did SA use those exact words in an early post? No, it was another poster who used those words and that LHoD then inserted into SA’s post. If that was done by accident, then OK. But on purpose, I’d say that’s a violation of the rules. I’m sure LHoD knows that particular rule is enforced strictly. The inserted words were more than “clarification”-- they were editorializing.
Whether it should have been a warning or a mod note is debatably. But it looks like a rule violation to me.
SA was responding to a poster who noted that Trump was an “egotistical, self-aggrandizing narcissist”, and SA responded that “most of that is just an act”. In context, it’s very clear that when SA wrote “that” he was referring to the prior poster’s “egotistical, self-aggrandizing narcissist”, but that wasn’t obvious to someone who didn’t see the prior poster’s words. So it was a legitimate clarification of SA’s words.
The rules as written don’t make the distinction you make, and there doesn’t seem to be any rational basis for it.
It’s explicit and transparent that the part in square brackets in not part of the quote, and in any case square brackets are standard notation for inserting something within a quote that is not claimed to be part of a quote to clarify an out-of-context reference in the quote. The content of the brackets is an accurate and non-pejorative statement of what “that” in the quote refers to.
I completely fail to understand what the warning is for. By any conventional standards outside of SDMB, the quote was NOT altered in any way.
This would be a correct usage according to what Ed has defined above.
This probably would not.
That said, I’m not sure LHoD’s usage was within the rule, although he made an attempt to fit it there. Was he *clarifying or adding *an editorial comment? One would fit, the other would not.
Although that appears as a sticky in the Pit, it’s pretty clear Ed is setting a board standard when he posted that.
The proper way to do what LHoD need to do would be to simply quote both posts. He should not have inserted wording from one poster into another person’s post:
How difficult is that? Just use the multi-quote function.
IMHO a mod note would have been more appropriate than a warning (looks like an honest mistake), but that’s another debate.
Perhaps, although that changes the actual original quote that SA was referring to. The original bracket by LHoD left the original wording untouched. However, even if you’re right stylistically, it would seem to warrant a mod note more than a warning.
Not difficult at all! I use it in this very post. However, the other method seems to be explicitly allowed in the rules.
Wow. I am gobsmacked. I was genuinely trying to follow the rule here; there’s nothing unclear about what I did; I explained that it was an attempt at clarification; I was not editorializing. While there are other pathways to doing it, I really don’t see this as outside the rules, given the rules about how quotes may be altered (i.e., with non-editorializing brackets).
I’m going to kick this around the loop. It might be a bit as I have a busy work day, though.
My point of view was the LHoD was changing the quote to make it appear that SA was agreeing with the negative characterization of Trump. But I’m willing to see what the others say.