I click reply, reply to a comment, but my reply looks like I replied to this comment:
Why does the quote feature on this board work like that? It looks like I responded in a way to a comment that I did not.
I understand that the poster re-thought his original comment, but he actually completely changed it (first comment disputing that nothing was free, but in second comment agreeing with the proposition).
It’s not a huge deal, but this feature/bug could allow remarks to be taken absolutely wrong if a poster went away for a week or so.
First Poster: I believe that all races should come together and get along for the sake of our children.
Second Poster: I could not agree more.
First Poster: [edits while Second Poster is typing]. I think all niggers should die.
Because that’s the way vBulletin designed it to work. The board isn’t going to modify the functionality of vBulletin so we’re stuck with it.
As to why it works like that, once you’ve quoted something it’s just text, not a link back to the base post. There’s a link that will take you back to the original post next to the quote, but the text itself has been copied and doesn’t change dynamically. It’s the same with old usernames, that don’t change in quotes even though they change in the posts.
I think that can only happen if you hit quote in between you reading the original and the poster doing the edit. There is no auto change of your quote box text to update the quoted text responsive to the edit.
IOW, if minute 1, poster posts A. And minute 2 they edit. If you push quote after minute 2 it will show the edit. If you press quote at minute 1.5 it will show original.
If you load page at minute 1 and press quote at minute 3, then it will show edit which could look weird but makes sense. Preview takes care of this, but it’s a bandaid and a consequence of allowing edits. The call to the server responds to what is current, not what was last loaded on your browser.
If you click the quote button, then you should see a text box with the quoted text already in it in quote tags. You can check at that point that you’re quoting what you think you are. The only things that ever go in your post are the things in that text box at the time that you hit submit.
It sounds like the sequence of events is something like this:
Original poster posts first post.
You load thread, with the first post in it.
Original poster edits post, but you don’t see it, because the page you have loaded in your browser was before the edit.
You hit the quote button.
vBulletin fetches the text of that post as it existed at the time you hit the button, and puts it in your quote tags.
You don’t notice that the post has been edited, and submit your post with the new quote in it.
You notice the difference when your post shows up.
I think that got changed with the update. It would appear as if the quoted text actually links to the original text. In the first test thread after the board was live a few months ago I pointed it out and mentioned that I didn’t like it and that it should be turned off since it could cause problems. I was told, IIRC, that it probably wouldn’t be an issue since it’s probably not going to be an issue. My reply was that A) we have a short edit window for fast moving discussions and B)the issue was caught within an hour, surely it’ll be problematic over the next few years.
It’s easy enough to test. Someone quote someone, post it and the the original person needs to edit it after it’s posted but within the edit window.
As a moderator on another vB message board, I can say in all confidence, yes they can. The mods here say that if someone violates a rule in their original message, then edits it within five minutes, they’re still liable for what they said before the edit occurred.
You can even see your own edits for the duration of the edit window if you click on the “last edited by” line. The link goes away with the edit button, but (assuming this power is granted to the mods here) it stays a link for them.
