# What happened to the quote text speech bubble? **URL:** \ **Category:** Site Feedback\ **Created:** [February 17, 2025, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424 "2025-02-17T18:29:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![pjd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pjd/32/3009_2.png) [@pjd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pjd)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2025, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/21 "2025-02-17T19:33:07Z")
Damn. That was useful, iirc it was labelled “Quote entire post” or words to that effect. **WHY CAN’T THEY JUST LEAVE IT ALONE FFS ?** ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2025, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/22 "2025-02-17T19:45:00Z")
“We’re always improving the customer experience–whether customers like it or not!” ---
**Author:** ![Ellecram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellecram/32/18948_2.png) [@Ellecram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellecram)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/23 "2025-02-18T00:59:36Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > The interface _did_ change. Now, when I highlight a text, it offers the quote/copy quote option, but the quote bubble is gone. Weird. Yes! I always used the quote bubble and now it is gone. I have to highlight with Quote instead. I have not changed anything else in my set up. It’s always worked before until today. At least Quote still works. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/24 "2025-02-18T02:32:10Z")
Yeesh, would someone _please_ do a screen shot of this thingie you keep referring to as a “quote bubble”? I have no idea what you’re talking about. When I’m quoting a post, this is what I see and what I’ve always seen since vB gave way to Discourse: [![](https://www.genderkitten.com/WS4/Upload_Download/QuoteNoBubblyThings.jpg) ](https://www.genderkitten.com/WS4/Upload_Download/QuoteNoBubblyThings.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/25 "2025-02-18T02:39:48Z")
To the left of the “B” along the top: [![](https://d11a6trkgmumsb.cloudfront.net/original/4X/e/8/4/e849ef36e6b3e887189ed132ccf2edd6570ec596.png) ](https://d11a6trkgmumsb.cloudfront.net/original/4X/e/8/4/e849ef36e6b3e887189ed132ccf2edd6570ec596.png) ---
**Author:** ![pjd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pjd/32/3009_2.png) [@pjd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pjd)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/26 "2025-02-18T12:05:02Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > “We’re always improving the customer experience–whether customers like it or not!” Well, i asked on the discourse forum and that was pretty much their response. Several other discourse users have also complained about it. One user has created a theme component to put it back > **[Full quote button in editor missing](https://meta.discourse.org/t/full-quote-button-in-editor-missing/350719/33)** > > I’ve made another theme component to add back the composer button. It works like the original quote post button worked in toolbar. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/27 "2025-02-18T12:18:05Z")
> [@pjd](#): > > Well, i asked on the discourse forum and that was pretty much their response. Here’s their response from that topic, if anyone is curious about their (stated) reasoning: > **[Full quote button in editor missing](https://meta.discourse.org/t/full-quote-button-in-editor-missing/350719/5)** > > Thanks for reaching out — we made a decision to remove the full quote button for a few reasons: The space on the composer toolbar is quite limited, so we needed to find a way to reduce the number of actions. We’ll be continuing this work in... “We’ll be continuing this work in future iterations…” sounds a bit threatening to me. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/28 "2025-02-18T12:28:43Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > “We’re always improving the customer experience–whether customers like it or not!” At my store we have a cloud-based POS that regularly gets ‘upgrades’ and I’ve regularly complained to them that they’ve got to give us a heads up about these things. Having a line of customers and then realizing a button has been moved or a procedure has been changed isn’t the fun surprise the company seems to think it is. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/29 "2025-02-18T13:45:24Z")
Thanks! Can anyone add this to their Discourse “experience”? How? (I know it’s probably “follow the instructions,” but I’m on Firefox and don’t want to mess anything up…) ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/30 "2025-02-18T13:51:43Z")
I don’t buy their reasoning: **The space on the composer toolbar is quite limited, so we needed to find a way to reduce the number of actions. We’ll be continuing this work in future iterations, so you may notice more movement or changes as we make progress there.** On my interface, the bar doesn’t even go much more than halfway across the box in which text is typed–so what are they saving space for?! Also, the old system on the Dope (pre-Discourse) had a “kitchen sink” icon that brought up a bunch of other formatting options. Why doesn’t Discourse make use of something like that? It seems like a no-brainer, and that _is_ a space-saver. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/31 "2025-02-18T13:55:55Z")
Their stated reasoning also seems specious to me. But they’re making it clear that it’s intentional, like it or lump it. I remember @codinghorror also being prone to staking out an unpopular decision on design characteristics and then letting post-hoc justifications fly. But they’re quite clear that it’s their way or the highway, unless someone else creates a tool (extension, theme tweak, css magic, etc.) to tailor it. > [@Aeschines](#): > > Can anyone add this to their Discourse “experience”? How? Poking around the code in github, it looks like a theme component, so our theme guru would have to incorporate it into one of our available themes. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/32 "2025-02-18T14:25:53Z")
I suspect this is for exactly the same reason that a full quote of an immediately preceding post is automatically deleted – it’s not “elegant” to fully quote a preceding post because it should be obvious who you’re replying to. Except it isn’t, because there’s no way to distinguish between a reply to the preceding post and a reply to the OP – an unintended consequence of over-design. This just makes a bad thing worse. The idea here is apparently to prevent users from making lengthy quotes – “quote exactly the part you’re responding to” seems to be the design goal. The unintended consequence here is that it can be awkward to quote anything at all on touchscreen devices because of quirks in the way that highlighting works. The overarching design philosophy here seems to be “users are stupid, but we’re going to make the site elegant in spite of them”. I can see the final iteration in which Discourse is the shining epitome of perfect elegance when users are prohibited from making any posts at all. All we will be allowed to do is read and grunt while Discobot makes all the posts. 🙄 Discourse is, overall, a very well designed platform. I much prefer it to our old vBullletin. But at the same time, I can see it at some point in the future being used in some CS class as an example of analyst-driven over-design: “we know what you need better than you do”. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/33 "2025-02-18T14:42:08Z")
Oh yeah… there’s a toolbar. I forgot there was a toolbar. I don’t think I ever noticed the quote bubble thingie. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/34 "2025-02-18T14:49:49Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > […] there’s no way to distinguish between a reply to the preceding post and a reply to the OP – an unintended consequence of over-design. Yes, it should be made clearer. Instantly clear, that is. > [@](#): > > The overarching design philosophy here seems to be “users are stupid, but we’re going to make the site elegant in spite of them”. > > I can see the final iteration in which Discourse is the shining epitome of perfect elegance when users are prohibited from making any posts at all. Lol, yes, it’s like Apple taking all the ports off the MacBooks, cuz having a blank piece of aluminum as your computer is, like, so modern, doood! ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/35 "2025-02-18T15:19:18Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I don’t think I ever noticed the quote bubble thingie. Neither did I. I post on my phone the vast majority of the time and I just select what I want to quote (which might be the whole post). Even though getting the quote popup to appear can be awkward, it still seems like the most intuitive way to do it. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/36 "2025-02-18T15:21:34Z")
The “highlight and quote” method is buggy. It doesn’t capture coding, so that you lose _italics_, **bold** , ~~strikethrough~~ , and underline. ---
**Author:** ![pjd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pjd/32/3009_2.png) [@pjd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pjd)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/37 "2025-02-18T15:21:38Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Except it isn’t, because there’s no way to distinguish between a reply to the preceding post and a reply to the OP – an unintended consequence of over-design. There is a solution to that in this post … > [@Could we implement this option ...?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-we-implement-this-option/1005532): > > It’s a known ‘feature’ that when a post has one reply immediately following it, the reply doesn’t show the ‘replying to’ symbol (in the top right corner). This has often led to confusion about whether the reply actually is a reply to the previous post, or is a reply to the original post. This thread from the Discourse Meta site appears to show how this can be cured :- Maybe this should be in Site Feedback… No doubt i’ll find out soon ! but no one seems interested in implementing it. > [@Pleonast](#): > > It doesn’t capture coding On the discourse site, the “Quote” option can do the same thing that the “quote whole post” button did, ie, it will include **all** the text, including embedded codes, which doesn’t happen here. 🙄 ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/38 "2025-02-18T15:22:07Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > you lose _italics_, **bold** , ~~strikethrough~~ , and underline Oh, it seems they’ve fixed three of the four bugs. ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/39 "2025-02-18T20:58:11Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > At my store we have a cloud-based POS that regularly gets ‘upgrades’ and I’ve regularly complained to them that they’ve got to give us a heads up about these things. I realize that you’re talking about a Point Of Sale system but that three letter acronym could easily mean something else in this context. 😄 ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2025, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424/40 "2025-02-18T21:13:31Z")
> [@Shoeless](#): > > I realize that you’re talking about a Point Of Sale system but that three letter acronym could easily mean something else in this context. In this case, they’re interchangeable. This POS is quite the POS. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happened-to-the-quote-text-speech-bubble/1014424.md?page=3)