In another thread, Ascenray wrote (referring to Chronos, I think)
Do you mean the difference between the way I quoted above and this:
Why does it matter?
What about
which I often do?
The little icon next to a name in a quote generated from clicking the Quote button will take you to the post being quoted. It’s immensely handy for following a conversation back through the thread.
Concur. And I, for one, try to be especially careful to use it since I, for one, tend to pare down an original post to the part I want to respond to when I quote it.
It’s handy, and if you don’t find it too much of a hassle to do it the normal way please do, but you shouldn’t feel obligated or pressured to do it that way if your way is what works for you. So long as you aren’t altering quotes to make people say something they didn’t or something along those lines, if people don’t like how you quote they can just deal with it.
This is what I’m talking about. Chronos quotes like this:
When you hit the “quote” button or the “multiquote” button to reply, this is what you get:
You see the erroneous “Quoth Ascenray” stuck into the quote? Unless you make certain to go back and delete it, you’ve misattributed the quotation. The whole problem is that Chronos is sticking in an extraneous manual attribution instead of using the native attribution.
The advantages of using the native quote function include:
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As others have pointed out, you get the automatic arrow link back to the original quoted post.
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You automatically get the correct attribution and later posters don’t have to make sure to correct the attribution when replying.
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Using the automatic quote function ensures that you get the correct attribution (and also … ahem … you don’t have to worry about misspelling another poster’s user name).
No you haven’t, because that’s not the attribution for the quote; it’s part of it. “Quoth Acsenray” is in the quote box because it is, indeed, something I said. Just because the automatic quote function puts things in the quote box that aren’t part of the quote, doesn’t mean that everyone else does. Some of us prefer to leave our attributions just outside the quote box, where they belong.
Oh, and sorry about the misspelling of your name. I guess I read too quickly.
It looks exactly like an attribution, in exactly the same way that your original use of “quoth…” looks exactly like an attribution. You’re needlessly introducing ambiguity. Actually, no, I take that back. It’s not ambiguous. It’s straight up misattribution.
No, it doesn’t look like an attribution, because it’s not in the right place for an attribution. It’s not my fault the automatic quote feature puts the attribution in the wrong place.
:rolleyes:
Wow. How circular. You invent a rule about where attribution should be places and then conclude that your “style” isn’t misleading because it doesn’t conform to your made up rule. It’s astonishing when you know very well that people on these boards are used to seeing the attribution exactly where the software automatically puts it.
“Acsenray said Wow. How circular.”
Does that quote look funny to you? Why? Now suppose that the board had a feature that whenever you used quotation marks in a post, you could push a button to make it look like that. Would you use that feature? Because that’s what the automatic block quote does.
Look, if you’re going to complain about me “misattributing”, then I could just as well complain about you misquoting me, since I never actually said “Originally posted by Chronos”.
I don’t think that he is. He’s complaining that the way you attribute quotes makes it easier for other people to misattribute when they quote you.
I almost mentioned this in the thread in question. Speaking as a moderator, and with all due respect, I would request you to use the regular quote button and not do the “quoth” thing outside the quote box. I had to edit the quote that Ascenray mentions here so it didn’t look misattributed. The way you do it is likely to lead to an apparent misattribution. I see no good reason to leave your attributions outside the quote box. Please don’t do it to in order to avoid confusion.
That’s not the reading I get from this:
Miller’s interpretation of my comment is the correct one.
What I don’t like about the way Chronos quotes posts is that there little arrow that can bring you back to the quoted post is missing.
Whatever. It’s potentially confusing and can make more work for the moderators. I don’t see any benefits to it. Please don’t do it.
The problem is that the software doesn’t allow for nested quotes. Thus it eliminates the quoted text, and leaves the words “Quoth Poster X” in place (if they’re outside the quote box), as if Poster X had said the words that followed, when in reality the poster who quoted Poster X said those words in reply.
In general, nested quoted make it easier to understand the posts without having to scroll back - as it is, the software combines together statements which were said with in reponse to multiple issues as if they were one continuous expression.
Is there a reason nested quotes are not shown?
They turned on the nested quotes feature sometime last year for a few weeks. It cause all kinds of problems. So they turned it off. You can do it yourself.
Oh, and I’m going to vote against Chronos on this one. Your style does create confusion.
As **Omar ** notes, we tried it out for a bit but it also led to misattributions if people made editing errors. This led to a lot of requests for moderators to fix the wrong attributions. So we discontinued it. If you care to, you can still do nested quotes manually.
In a nutshell, this:
(bolding added)
Since people weren’t competent enough to handle nested quotes, I assume that the next step is to eliminate the quote function in general.