Jonathon Chance, what are you on about here?

[Crazyhorse]

Based on the way the quote rule has been enforced throughout my time here, at least, this was not a rule violation.

The text inside a formal, board-generated quote box, leading with “Originally posted by…” is considered sacrosanct. Any other use of quotation marks, italics, etc. to quote ( or misquote) a poster has never been considered to be the same thing. Here is just one exampleof dozens that I can find right away, where TPTB reinforced the idea that text outside of a formal quote box can be edited.

This came up recently in another thread, and despite a few mods indicating they thought “a quote is a quote” initially, the final decision as posted by Colibri was that it is only a rules violation if using the quote box with attribution.

@Colibri

Sorry, we’ve been having some discussion about this in the mod loop, since there was some ambiguity about whether what you did constituted attributing a quote according to the rules. Not everyone has been on line so it took a little while. Apologies to all for the delay in responding.

Our consensus is that what you did does not constitute a violation of the rule on altering quotes. The warning is hereby rescinded. (Note that RickJay did not actually enter the warning in the automated system, so that has not appeared in your profile.)

To clarify:

-The rule applies to altering texts within the quote tags, which is attributed to another poster on the board (“Originally posted by”), in a way intended to change the meaning.

-You may quote just relevant parts of a post. If you take out parts within the post, normal editing rules apply. Deletions should be indicated by ellipses (…), [snip], or something similar; and any editorial additions should be in square brackets. We’ll be the judge of whether a change of meaning was intentional or not.

-To avoid misunderstandings, it’s better not to “fix” typos or omissions, unless they change the meaning (and in such cases use square brackets to indicate the change).

-Unattributed text within the quote tags is OK. However, this shouldn’t be abused as a way to insult another poster outside the Pit.