Editing Quoted Sections

[DennyG]

When posting to an existing topic, we can either reply to the overall topic via the "FastReply" or "AddReply" buttons at the top and bottom of the page or to a specific entry via that entry's "Reply" button. In the latter case there is a "Quote" button that implies the ability to optionally either include or exclude a quote of the post being replied to but that seems not to work. It looks like all replies to individual posts include the original post regardless of the setting of that button. While that option might be nice, we can certainly live without it and it's not the reason for this post.

 

There is a way to quote all of a post and a way to quote no post at all. But there isn't a way to quote part of a post and that would be true even if the button worked (although this post would be shorter ). Partial quotes really are useful when we are responding to a specific point or don't want to unnecessarily repeat a big group of photos or some such. And here, at last, I'm coming to my point.

 

When the "Reply" button is pressed on an individual post, the reply automatically has the original post placed in it between two markers. It starts off with

and ends with

. Those two marks identify everything between them as a quote and they really should remain. Delete anything you want between the two sets of square brackets but leave the brackets and their contents. You can, of course, actually alter the quoted text so that looks like RoadMaven called everyone outside of Indiana a dufus but that's hardly proper forum etiquette. Delete bits that aren't wanted but try to keep the integrity of what you do quote.

 

"Why now?", you might ask and that would be a good question. I've seen quoted posts without the trailing before and am not aware of any real problems. But today, I tried to reply to such a post and got an "Internal Server Error". I was about to add to Becky's workload by telling her about it when I noticed that the post contained the beginning of a quote but not its end. Once I edited it (I guess my moderator superpowers allow me to do that. ), the reply worked just fine. And that is what triggered this bit of "y'all be careful".

[Chris Rowland]

When posting to an existing topic, we can ... be nice, we can certainly live without ... you ... You .., of course, ... a dufus ... might ask ... a good question. I've seen ... Becky's ... superpowers ... just fine.

I usually try to keep the original intent when I trim a quote. In this case, however, I am demonstrating how not to do it.

 

Quoting only the particular part you are responding to makes it much more meaningful.

 

Chris

[DennyG]

I usually try to keep the original intent when I trim a quote. In this case, however, I am demonstrating how not to do it.

Hilarious. You took the words right out of my...ahh...paragraph.