Quotes

[bill]

Now, I am posting this here because the Customer Forum has the air of a house after the kids have left for university...

Am I the only one that is becoming increasingly irritated by the use of the [quote] button? Threads seem to grow like topsy because people quote constantly in full from previous posts in the thread. I'm not complaining when it is appropriate - I do it myself, but I try to edit the post I am quoting from so that only the relevant bit appears in my own posting.

It's now so easy to do it seems that as much as 50% of a thread consists of repetition, particularly if contentious. Result - more scrolling, more pagination, slower downloads on my PDA, more server space consumed, etc. etc.

Thoughts?

(Feel free to quote from the above... )

Regards.

Bill

[TimF]

I agree completely. Quoting part of a reply is fine and dandy - especially if a thread has moved on into another direction since the quoted post first appeared, but great swathes of reheated material is undesirable if not unacceptable.

C'mon guys. Slash & burn of irrelevant bits isn't hard.

[moikle]

[quote=bill]Now, I am posting this here because the Customer Forum has the air of a house after the kids have left for university...

Am I the only one that is becoming increasingly irritated by the use of the

button? Threads seem to grow like topsy because people quote constantly in full from previous posts in the thread. I'm not complaining when it is appropriate - I do it myself, but I try to edit the post I am quoting from so that only the relevant bit appears in my own posting.

It's now so easy to do it seems that as much as 50% of a thread consists of repetition, particularly if contentious. Result - more scrolling, more pagination, slower downloads on my PDA, more server space consumed, etc. etc.

Thoughts?

(Feel free to quote from the above... )

Regards.

Bill

Can't think what you mean Bill

Mike

[cbretteville]

Bill,
Thank you for bringing this up. It really annoys me. Quoting a full page post just to say "thank you" or some other one line comment is hopelssly inconsidderate of other readers. Some do not even take out posted pictures - whats up with that?. Edit the quote down to the minimum relevant part(s). Then write your answer. Use the [preview] button to see what your post looks like. I wish the quotes were collapsible and the default was on.

While on the subject: it is possible to answer more than one poster in a single reply. On the German side they use "@Rudolf" or you could simply use "Rudolf:" one line inbetween sections and you're done. Nice and neet and not a kilometer of posts to scroll through.

- Carl

[bill]

bump.

[roblumba]

I agree that people should quote as minimally as possible, but it is easy to follow a discussion with the quotes. Especially when there are people responding to each other and I don't care much about it. I skip forward until I see something not related to their quotings or related to quotings that I'm interested in..

Might I suggest to get a mouse with a scroll function on the middle button. It makes scrolling through long posts very easy. It usually doesn't bother me.

[bill]

Originally Posted by roblumba

Might I suggest to get a mouse with a scroll function on the middle button. It makes scrolling through long posts very easy. It usually doesn't bother me.

Damn! Never thought of that!! How stupid of me!! I must rush out straightaway and get one!! That will solve all my life's problems at one swell foop!!

Note, incidentally, how I have only quoted from the bit of Robert's post to which my comment refers. Not that hard, is it?

Regards.

Bill

[spylaw4]

Well said Bill - selective quoting for ever! Mind you, quotes are especially useful when posting in a long thread, particularly one that has strayed away from the original topic! Not that we would ever do that in this forum, would we?

[craigrmurray]

Am I the only one that is becoming increasingly irritated by the use of the quote button? Threads seem to grow like topsy because people quote constantly in full from previous posts in the thread.

Bill:

I think there could be a sort of technological solution in the Forum's software, if only it could be implemented.

When the Forum changed formats last summer, I intuitively (and ignorantly) thought I could just highlight the text I wanted to quote in a post, and push the Quote button -- the result being that only the highlighted text would appear in the "quote" box. To my chagrin, the entire post appeared ; all that does is allow the Quote button to become a shortcut to that post, ie. a slightly quicker Reply button.

So, if one could select the post by highlighting, much verbiage would be eliminated.

Of course, one could just edit the text and be done with it.

[sagarwal]

I don't remember where now, but I've encountered some forum software (or was it a mailing list thing) that did not allow you to post a reply with quoted text if the new text you wrote didn't comprise more than a certain percentage of the total text of your post.

[cbretteville]

Bump