Nested quotes have been discontinued

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101

Since the handful complaining about nested quotes never stopped, I don’t see why you can’t bump this from time to time (or start three new threads per week).

The PITA level has jumped since they were turned off (again). Posts like this:

Turn into simply this:

Trivial, yes, but emblematic nonetheless. Replying to a post when someone edited out the “posted by” bit requires some combination of searching, copying, pasting, and re-tagging.

PITA because some people couldn’t be bothered to or were somehow incapable of highlighting and deleting unwanted material.

102

As opposed to the PITA for everyone else who had to constantly delete unwanted nested quotes because you couldn’t be bothered to or were somehow incapable of highlighting and copy/pasting *wanted *material?

103

It’s a lot easier to delete unwanted nested quotes than it is to go through the back-and-forth process of building nested quotes from scratch.

104

Not when you consider volume. Most quotes are perfectly comprehensible without a nested quote, so most of the time they’re just getting deleted. And when they’re deleted, if they’re deleted wrong, they completely break the post and screw up attribution. Compare this to manually nesting quotes, which requires two seconds with ctrl+f plus a copy-paste, where you can easily see exactly where you’re sticking it. No comparison at all, IMO, and the PTB appear to agree.

(Seriously, if you’re having problems building nested quotes, you’re doing it wrong. Just do a search on the composition page for a portion of the post you want to include a previous quote from, and if it’s part of the recent discussion, it will be right there. If it’s further back, all you have to do is spawn a new tab to that page of the thread and again search for the post. It’s not rocket surgery.)

105

::dons fake mustache::

I’m not sure who got everyone all worked up about nested quotes, but I for one sure am glad they’re gone!

106

My, what a handsome mustache that new young man I’ve never seen before has! And what a long neck. And lovely spots.

107

The people having “problems” are the shrill incompetents who couldn’t seem to figure out how to highlight and delete without screwing things up. Even your so-called simple explanation of what to do mirrors the complaint about the [del]safety scissors[/del] removal of nested quotes. Searching through multi-page threads for multiple quotes, opening new tabs, copy and pasting into notepad files (when a poster put off-board material in quote tags), etc. is the essence of why the loss of nested quotes sucks.

Quoting someone for the first time? Great, you have nothing nested. Find yourself with nested quotes? Great. Highlight, drag, delete, done.

108

Did you even read my suggestion? You’re making manual nested quotes much harder than they have to be. How often do you use them, anyway? And how often are you looking to pull in a nested quote that’s more than 50 posts back in the thread you’re replying to? :dubious:

109

Um, did you even read your own suggestion?

Searching, opening new tabs, copying material that’s from an outside source … these are what makes the lack of nested quotes a pain in the ass. And yes, on lots of threads there are quotes that extend beyond the page, and its disingenuous to say that that’s only when they’re 50 posts apart–posts 52 and 49 will be on separate pages.

It’s also disingenuous to play the “but it’s not that often” game. I daresay the most common situation is hitting quote and get no nested quotes. And if nested quotes are not that common, then why make it problematic for when they are needed?

Highlighting and deleting unwanted material is trivially easy.

Collecting posts to rebuild is straightforward, but a pain in the ass and time consuming.

110

People who find it hard to build nested quotes manually are just shrill incompetents who cant seem to figure out how to highlight and add copy/paste without screwing things up.

111

I never said it was difficult. Difficult and a pain in the ass are two separate concepts. It is trivial time- and effort-wise to select what you don’t want and delete it. It is incompetence that ruled the day–incompetence in deleting too much or too little. Creating nested quotes from scratch takes time and several steps. That these steps don’t take a mental effort is not in question–again, I’m only questioning the mental state of being incapable of accurately highlighting and deleting. One step versus several. Trivial effort versus pain in the ass.

112

It is trivial time- and effort-wise to click the “multi-quote” button on each post you want to quote. It is incompetence that fuels the complaints – incompetence in being able to click a button.

113

Yes, but apparently it wasn’t framed simply enough for you. Here it is again, broken down. You’ll note that there’s nothing in there about Notepad, and a separate tab (not tabs) only comes into play if you want to put in a nested quote from an old post.

1.) Open a composition window with the appropriate post(s) (multi)quoted.

2.) Copy a piece of text from the post that’s missing a nested quote.

3.) Hit Ctrl+F or the search shortcut in your browser of choice and paste in the text you’ve just copied and search for it.

4.) This should take you further down on the same page with your composition window, in the Topic Review section, to the post you’re quoting.

5.) Highlight the text quoted in that post that you want to include as a nested quote.

6.) Hit “Home” or whatever shortcut your browser uses to take you back to the top of the page.

7.) Place your cursor where you’d like the nested quote, hit the quote tag button, and paste the copied text in the middle. Attribute the quote if you so desire.

Easy as pie. The only time you’ll need to open a separate window is if you’re quoting from something more than 50 posts back; everything else will be in the Thread Review for you.

And I notice that you haven’t responded to how often you actually need to use a nested quote. I haven’t seen anybody complaining, in ATMB or in threads, that they can’t follow the conversation because not enough people are including nested quotes.

ETA: And, as **Ellis Dee **noted, you can simply use the multiquote button for the posts you want to include as nested, which works for all board material.

114

I agree, although i also think that it was trivial, time- and effort-wise, to deal with the multi-quote system. It was incompetence that fueled the problems with that system—incompetence in being able to work out what to delete and what to leave in.

115

So if both systems are trivially easy, the only logical answer is to adopt as default the system that would be used more often. This is clearly the single-quote feature. Nested quotes are called for much less frequently.

EDIT: Shot From Guns, that’s just silly. Much easier is to simply click the MultiQuote button on each post you wish to quote and then click Post Reply. Much easier even than removing nested quotes you don’t want.

116

The point of my method is that you don’t have to plan it out ahead of time, versus getting to the composition window and realizing that you forgot to multiquote something.

117

You just posted seven steps to build a quote. Which is easier? That or

  1. Select unwanted text
  2. Hit delete.

Get it? It’s not Rocket Vivisection. It’s much less time consuming and much less a pain in the ass.

And continuing the “more than 50 posts apart” line is moving beyond disingenuous. Again, posts don’t have to be more than 50 apart to be on separate pages. Posts 49 and 50 will be on separate pages.

And I’m glad that you were able to do what takes two steps in seven. I’m glad you didn’t need to use notepad. That, though, is intentional obtuseness. Notepad (or clipboard, or whatever) comes into play when someone puts off-board material in quotes.

Again, seven (plus) steps versus two.

118

It’s not seven steps. Just click the multi-quote button on each post to quote and click Post Reply. It’s much easier than selecting unwanted text and hitting delete. Your way is much more time consuming and much more of a pain in the ass.

119

Two steps is much more of a pain in the ass? It’s still less work than finding the assorted quotes to multi-quote. Multi-quote is great, useful, and a boon to functionality. But disabling nested quotes because people have problems highlighting and deleting was a sop to the lowest of the denominators.

120

I expanded my directions considerably when you were confused by the way I phrased them the first time. Judging by the rest of your post, you continue to be confused by them, even after I broke them down into what I thought were very easily comprehensible steps. For comparison, your two-step process for deleting unwanted nested quotes would expand further if I were to make a version of the explanation that’s comparable to mine for inserting them.

Inserting an individual nested quote does take *slightly *more time than removing an unwanted one. However, (a) it occurs much, much less frequently, meaning that it’s a lot less time-consuming in aggregate; (b) it’s IMO less of a pain in the ass because, as you’re putting in all the tags yourself, it’s very easy to see where markup starts and ends; and (c) it’s much harder to screw up, especially to screw up in such a way that breaks your post, breaks the post of anyone quoting your broken post, and misattributes quotes.

Here’s yet another thing you’ve misunderstood. I’m talking about the Topic Review that shows up under every composition window after you quote a post. That displays the most recent 50 posts of the thread (with the most recent at the top), and contains a link at the end of it to the rest of the thread if there are more than fifty posts. It’s this Topic Review that makes manually nesting quotes so easy, because anything that’s been recently said that you might want to include is right there with your composition window, ready to be copied and pasted into manual nesting quotes.

Here’s a fun 50-post fact for you. Despite your protestations about how essential automatic nested quotes are, they’ve been used not once in the past 50 posts of this thread, except where they were deliberately introduced to discuss some aspect of the way the board deals with them. (I.e., there is not one post in those 50 where someone felt the need to include a nested quote to clarify their reply.)

What? No, it doesn’t. It works just the same way–search for it, copy it, paste it in. There’s no need to use an intermediary program. I really can’t help but feel that you’ve completely misunderstood my instructions when you keep talking about Notepad.