Quote Pyramid Solution

[skace]

Quote Pyramids have been an ongoing issue on AT for as long as I can remember. Someone, quotes someone, who quotes someone, and the next thing you know every other post is 2 pages long. Now, I don't follow forum issues, but I searched and can't really tell if this has been discussed but what about this solution:

Make it so that when you click the quote button, it cuts all previous quotes from the persons post that you are quoting. I've seen this done on other forums and it seems to work so nicely, I thought I'd bring it up here. Surely this would be a nice fix to get finally end the quote pyramid.

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: skace
Quote Pyramids have been an ongoing issue on AT for as long as I can remember. Someone, quotes someone, who quotes someone, and the next thing you know every other post is 2 pages long. Now, I don't follow forum issues, but I searched and can't really tell if this has been discussed but what about this solution:

Make it so that when you click the quote button, it cuts all previous quotes from the persons post that you are quoting. I've seen this done on other forums and it seems to work so nicely, I thought I'd bring it up here. Surely this would be a nice fix to get finally end the quote pyramid.

But I like quote pyramids.

 

[n0cmonkey]

What's wrong with excessive quoting?

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
What's wrong with excessive quoting?

It makes it hard to follow the thread, espcially on mobile devices like my Treo....

 

[KarenMarie]

I agree... people should have the couretsy to snip parts out.

 

[jalaram]

Originally posted by: KarenMarie
I agree... people should have the couretsy to snip parts out.

This is the internet. Since when have people been courteous?

Seriously, I don't think there's a software solution for it. Individuals just need to be more considerate.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Maybe it's time that AT took the step, and implemented Ted Nelson's idea of "Transclusion"?
I've always thought that the idea of range-delimited hyperlinks was a neat one. If that were implimented (client-side, I'm talking about), then all of those sections of quoted text wouldn't have to be re-downloaded from the server each time, only the quoted posts once, and then referenced by the others. Unfortunately, given the existance of the "edit" button on posts, that would also mean that one could not "quote for posterity" any more. A tradeoff, I guess. (Even better, given a write-once/read-many globally-distributed object store, with every object given a provably-unique ID... well, I'm getting OT here. But I was once working on a scheme like that, in a galaxy far, far away.)

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
What's wrong with excessive quoting?

It makes it hard to follow the thread, espcially on mobile devices like my Treo....

Well yeah, maybe if you are trying to browse the internet on a device clearly not able to handle it.

 

[bsobel]

Well yeah, maybe if you are trying to browse the internet on a device clearly not able to handle it.

Oh, I don't browse, my IMAP client gets my thread subscriptions well. But the overly quoted threads just get to big to be worth it (IMHO, your mileage may vary, not valid in all states, etc)

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: malak

Originally posted by: skace
Quote Pyramids have been an ongoing issue on AT for as long as I can remember. Someone, quotes someone, who quotes someone, and the next thing you know every other post is 2 pages long. Now, I don't follow forum issues, but I searched and can't really tell if this has been discussed but what about this solution:

Make it so that when you click the quote button, it cuts all previous quotes from the persons post that you are quoting. I've seen this done on other forums and it seems to work so nicely, I thought I'd bring it up here. Surely this would be a nice fix to get finally end the quote pyramid.

But I like quote pyramids.

Why's that? I can't stand them.

A feature that auto-removes everything older than the immediate parent message when the reply box is brought up would be nice, but please for the love of God do it when the user clicks on the reply button, not the post button - we should be able to do more complex manual quote work if we really want to, and the feature would still stop most of the quote neffing in ATOT. I'm sorry about my excessive emphasis here, but given the number of "improvements" that we've seen lately, I don't want to leave any points uncovered. :roll:

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: jalaram
Seriously, I don't think there's a software solution for it. Individuals just need to be more considerate.

It should actually be fairly easy to strip out all nested quotes at the time the [ Quote ] button is pressed.

This would remove most of the lazy neffer quote pyramids since people would have to build the pyramid manually.

 

[UglyCasanova]

In legit threads where people are quoting one another but adding comments then I don't really having too much of a problem with it other than being hard to read. I think that quote nesting like this should result in all participants being banned though. I thought that we once had a rule like that, but I guess it is no longer enforced. After a few people start it the entire thread becomes ruined because every 12 year old on here things it is just hilarious and has to jump on board. Usually after it starts in one thread they think they are just funny sh!t and do it in several threads as well.

I'm not sure if there is some kinda way to program it in to the code where you cannot quote someone without adding some kind of commentary of your own, but I would think it wouldn't be too difficult. Not only would it take care of the ignorant neffing mentioned above, but would also force people to engage in discussion rather than simply quoting someone you are in agreement with and hitting reply. That does not bother me nearly as much as the neffing, but it seems rather stupid just to quote someone and hit reply without adding anything yourself. Anywho, that's my idea. Whatcha think?

 

[skace]

Originally posted by: ProviaFan
A feature that auto-removes everything older than the immediate parent message when the reply box is brought up would be nice, but please for the love of God do it when the user clicks on the reply button, not the post button

That was what I was thinking. forums.worldofwarcraft.com does this. If someone has quoted someone else, and you quote them, you only get that persons text in your window and not anything he quoted. By all means, you can manually add more quotes in, but it keeps the lazy from creating pyramids.

 

[MrBond]

That was what I was thinking. forums.worldofwarcraft.com does this. If someone has quoted someone else, and you quote them, you only get that persons text in your window and not anything he quoted. By all means, you can manually add more quotes in, but it keeps the lazy from creating pyramids.

There's other forums that do this too, I much prefer it. I think Fusetalk did it that way too before they changed to the "X user posted..." quote format.

I've taken to just doing the quotes manually (like this post) any time I quote someone because I like to use the quick reply box since I'm not a fan of the popup window

 

[Gamingphreek]

I think another good thing to suggest is collapsable quotes. When you quote you have a little plus sign (just like in Windows Explorer) which allows you to expand or contract the enormous quote.

-Kevin

 

[SagaLore]

Another option is to get rid of quotes altogether and thread the posts. So when you Reply-To a person, it is attached to their post. But you don't have to make it look like it does in a newsgroup thread - instead, at the top of each post, put in a # bookmark link to the post that is being replied to.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: SagaLore
Another option is to get rid of quotes altogether and thread the posts. So when you Reply-To a person, it is attached to their post. But you don't have to make it look like it does in a newsgroup thread - instead, at the top of each post, put in a # bookmark link to the post that is being replied to.

Nuh-uh. I've been in forums that used that scheme and it's impossible to follow threads of discussion. The problem being discussed here only applies to very large threads in the first place and that sort of quoting would be impossible in those situations.

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
I think another good thing to suggest is collapsable quotes. When you quote you have a little plus sign (just like in Windows Explorer) which allows you to expand or contract the enormous quote.

-Kevin

That is an excellent idea and I don't think it would be too hard to implement, if the quote structure was correct (you'd have to detect when people screw up their tags, right now you just get screwy output). The page could render with the outermost quote visible and the rest collapsed and you can expand if you want to see more.

Given that I'd also like to see smarter posting features because editing a highly quoted reply can be quite tricky (especially if you're inlining responses to a large post). More of a wysiwyg posting style with the same collapsible nodes. That might be a little trickier to implement with a browser as a client though

 

[skace]

Do site admins feel this is a valid issue? Wouldn't it cut down on the size of threads?

 

[EagleKeeper]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: jalaram
Seriously, I don't think there's a software solution for it. Individuals just need to be more considerate.

It should actually be fairly easy to strip out all nested quotes at the time the [ Quote ] button is pressed.

This would remove most of the lazy neffer quote pyramids since people would have to build the pyramid manually.

But that would slow down the neffers. Make it harder to get to the no-lifer level.

 

[Confused]

Originally posted by: SagaLore
Another option is to get rid of quotes altogether and thread the posts. So when you Reply-To a person, it is attached to their post. But you don't have to make it look like it does in a newsgroup thread - instead, at the top of each post, put in a # bookmark link to the post that is being replied to.

No way in hell would I come back here if they did that - I can't stand viewing any forums that use that.

I know that I often hit "Reply" at any single point in the thread, and not necessairly in reponse to the "Reply" i clicked - it was just closest to my mouse pointer when I wanted to reply.

What is needed is to strip out any quotes when you hit the Quote button...I'm sure it's pretty simple to do - it's done in many other forum packages, so it's not impossible.


Confused

 

[ShadowBlade]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
What's wrong with excessive quoting?

It makes it hard to follow the thread, espcially on mobile devices like my Treo....

its generally annoying when everything gets squished into a small ammount of space

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
What's wrong with excessive quoting?

 

[n0cmonkey]

How much is too much?