What is it with all these morons lately who quote an entire OP in the second post of a thread? I can barely contain my rage when someone does it three or four posts down, but at least they’ve got the paper-thin excuse that the OP was not the last thing we read.
What the fuck is going on in these people’s heads when they do this? Do they think our attention spans are so shallow that the thin blue line between the OP and their post erases our memories as we read down the page?
We had the same problem about two years ago on the board. Then – thank God – the objections reached a critical mass, bolstered by the support of the mods, and the practice virtually died off.
But now it’s roared back in all its annoying stupidity!
Time to dust off the torches and brickbats and take to the streets again, people! We must put an end to this insane practice, even if we have to crack a few heads in the process! Who’s with me!?!?
I agree wholeheartedly with this. I’ve thought many times about starting a pit thread about this shit. Hell, unless you’ve moved several posts down and the direction of the thread has changed, there’s really no need to quote someone if you’re still focusing on the general topic. If you’ve got a specific issue, quote the specific line, not the entire damned post!
I thought I was posting this to the Pit in the first place. When I discovered my mistake I asked the mods to send it there. So pack up your pixels, we should be moving soon.
I have a theory. If this phenomenon has resurfaced only recently, then it may be related to the board changes that we just went through. Down in the lower right corner of each post is a button that says “reply,” which, in at least the previous version of vB, said “quote.” If a poster hits this button to reply, he would (unintentionally?) end up quoting the entire OP. To avoid this situation, the “POST REPLY” button at the bottom of the thread (not of individual posts) should be used, but having two seemingly-similar buttons that actually perform different functions could be a source of confusion.
Now, upon seeing the entire OP repeated in the reply box, I don’t know why a poster would then not take the effort to at least trim it down a little.
Especially if the one replying is a newbie and still figuring things out here. I like having the two different reply buttons, though – you can use the one inside the particular post you’re answering for homing in on a specific poster’s comment; or you can hit the lower-left reply button for a more generalized comment on the thread.
That’s certainly easy to do. Or (as I’ve done here) you can throw in coding to break up the quoted post into segments, each with its own reply. I don’t mind seeing a previous post quoted in full, or nearly so, if the answerer is addressing each point specifically, and making the effort to interlineate his/her comments between quoted segments.
Sweet Jesus, I’ve SO been waiting for this thread!
That is my #2 pet peeve on these boards. What is #1 you ask? When someone asks a question, that question is answered by 4 or 5 different posters, then someone else comes in and asks the same fucking question. Rinse and repeat as necessary.
I hate this too. I see it all the time. I think it’s not because people are confused by the reply w/quote, but because they are too lazy to delete the text before typing their response.
#3 on the list is when there’s a thread regarding or containing obscur quotes, concepts, ideas, etc. someone comes by and says, “I can’t believe everytime I mention <insert obscur trivia here> no one knows what I’m talking about!”
Then they exclude to mention what the obscure trivia actually is/means/refers to, so that someone has to ask them and they get to post again.
No one is impressed by your trivial knowledge. We all know random facts. Get the fuck over yourself.
