There is currently a Pit thread where one of our newer members is trying out the Moon Hoax theory again. His OP is quite a screed - I can’t bring myself to read the whole thing, but it is many, many paragraphs long with dozens of embedded links.
Some of the replies to this re-quote the whole OP and then add a single line (TL;DR or “Cite?” or the like).
Is it any extra burden on the server or the hamsters to quote such a long post? I know there is, or used to be, a size limit on posts, and I am sure our latest Moon hoaxer is pushing it, but does it mess anything up to quote the thing?
I’m amazed anyone read past the first sentence of the OP in question. Thereafter, It was rather annoying having to scroll through it the first time, let alone several more times. Quoting that wall of text is like responding to a fart in an elevator by farting. It’s only funny to the guy passing gas.
I think people who quote several pages or paragraphs just to add a one line response to the bottom that could’ve been made just as well without quoting at all should be moderated. Not a warning, but a “mod note, this is bad practice” type of thing. This board is way better about it than the rest of the internet, but we should actively discourage what little remains.
Seems to me that in general long re-posts are bad manners but in this particular instance it was done for comedic purpose. Lets be honest, no one here is going to take that OP seriously so it’s not like it’s shitting up a good thread.
On the flipside, I thought there was a rule that informs us not to snip out a portion of a quoted post but instead to quote a post in its entirety.
Is this just an informal guideline, am I mis-remembering or did my search just now not take me there? I read through the rules on Posting and such… and came up empty-handed.
There has never been such a rule. The major rule about attributed quotes within the quote box is that they should not be edited to change their meaning. You may quote parts of posts. Within a quoted section, you may also edit out parts while inserting an ellipsis, [snip], or other indication of the edit.
