ADMIN: Quoting Tips

[RandallS]

Quoting Tips

We seem to be having some issues with quoting on the new board. Broadly, these fall into three categories:

Disappearing quotes: This is happening to a lot of our older members, who are in the habit of trimming their quotes, often just leaving the linkback in and deleting the rest. Anyone who wants to read the full quote can still click the linkback to see it. However, on this new board it is important when deleting the content of a quote to make sure the opening and closing quote bbcode are on separate lines. Otherwise the quote and linkback isn't visible in the post at all and we are left with no idea who is being responded to. vBulletin handles an empty quote BBcode differenmtly than SMF did.

Unnecessarily long quotes: This tends to be more noticeable when a very long quote, or one with pictures in it, is followed by a very short statement of appreciation or agreement. This is especially noticeable when a long post full of pictures or video links is quoted immediately below its original appearance. Since the major reason for the quote rule is so that we can track the conversation back when necessary, including the full content of long posts is unnecessary as long as the linkback is present. It is perfectly acceptable to trim a quote down to just the relevant 'bit' that one is responding to, or even to delete the entire content and leave only the linkback.

Quoting random posts: This is often done in threads like There I Said It or Bad Advice -- it's fine there, in the first case because the thread is not expected to directly relate to previous posts, and in the second because each post is an answer to the one before it, which makes that the natural one to quote. Quoting the last post in a normal thread, however, when you are actually answering an earlier one or the first one defeats the purpose of quoting (and is technically breaking our quoting rules) -- clicking the linkback would do us no good at all in attempting to track the conversation. Similarly, picking a random quote because it is short, without reference to the content, does us no good. If the quote you want to respond to is too long, trim it down to the relevant parts. As long as you don't change the part you leave in we are perfectly fine with such edits.

These three things are starting to become problems, and with a little care when posting they are unnecessary. If you are confused about any of it you can PM or email a staff member for help. Quoting is a major part of how this board works. It's not just an arbitrary quirk, it has a purpose.

For new members who do not understand the purpose our required quoting rules, you can see read an explanation of them and a discussion of them in these (and other) threads on our old SMF board: ADMIN: Using the Quote Button and Forced Quoting (unfortunately the good stuff in this thread is intermixed with posts from a group of problem members trying to have the board run the way the board they came from was ran.).

[CozyWitch]

Disappearing quotes: This is happening to a lot of our older members, who are in the habit of trimming their quotes, often just leaving the linkback in and deleting the rest. Anyone who wants to read the full quote can still click the linkback to see it. However, on this new board it is important when deleting the content of a quote to make sure the opening and closing quote bbcode are on separate lines. Otherwise the quote and linkback isn't visible in the post at all and we are left with no idea who is being responded to. vBulletin handles an empty quote BBcode differenmtly than SMF did.

Thanks for the explanation. I was wondering why my quotes kept disappearing!