Please help us prevent quote-cluttered threads!

[reTrEaD]

Many of our threads are becoming unnecessarily cluttered by long Quotes which may contain many large images and often cover screens of length. This guide will help you prevent adding clutter, by judicious use of quoting.

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Does this mean we should never quote?

Of course not! Quoting is a valuable tool, but when it's not necessary, don't do it.
Also, consider quoting only a portion of the post to which you're referring in your reply.

Why do people quote when it isn't necessary?

I reckon many people quote unnecessarily to avoid scrolling back to the top of the thread where the reply button is in the title bar. For your convenience, we've now added a Reply button to the left of the Quote button in every post in the thread as well as a Reply button at the very bottom of the thread. Those buttons look like this:

How do I quote only a portion of a post?

We've installed a plugin which allows the convenience of highlighting text, then a button which will appear which looks like this:

Clicking that button will grab the highlighted text and save it along with the author of the text and the post location from which it came. Then, when you click any Reply button on the thread, this partial quote will be placed in your reply. How cool is that!

Caution: Don't highlight text from a quote within a quote. This will attribute the text to the wrong author.

Note: Due to technical limitations, it's not possible to have a reply button in the Recent Posts list. So the Quick Quote can't be used there.

Is that the only way to quote only a portion of the text?

Nope. You can also quote the entire post, then delete the portions you don't need. But be careful to not ADD anything which wasn't there in the first place.

You can also copy and paste text into the text area of the posting page, then highlight it. If you then click the Insert Quote button: , that will surround the highlighted text with [quote][/quote] tags, creating a quote box. However this method will not show the author of the quote or indicate the post from which it came.

I sometimes have a problem where I can't type my reply anywhere but IN the quote box of the post I quoted!

Yes, it's rather easy to find yourself in this situation if your Posting Default is the Preview mode. If you backspace into the quote area, you won't be able to place your cursor outside of the quote.

The easy fix for this is to click on the BBCode tab below the textarea of the posting page. Then simply move your cursor after the [/quote] tag at the end, and begin typing your reply. You can click the Preview tab after you're done (or any time you like), to see how your post will appear.

If you'd like to have all your replies and posts to start in the BBCode mode, you can edit your own profile settings.

- Navigate to your own profile.
- Click the Edit Profile button.
- Click on the Settings tab.
- Scroll down to the Posting Default heading and click the radio button to the left of BBCode
- Click the Save Account Settings button at the bottom-left of the page.

Please note, you can toggle back and forth from BBCode mode and Preview mode at any time while you are on the posting page.

Sometimes I don't actually need to quote the person but I want to address them in my reply so they will know that I was talking directly to them. How can I do that?

Easy. Just click the Insert User Link button: and a popup will appear. Begin typing their username or display name in the input field on the popup. When their avatar and display name appear on the list, click that list item and their username preceded by an @ will be placed in your reply. Tagging them this way will send them a notification including a link to the post where you tagged them.

But when I use the Recent Posts link (or do a search) and read the posts there, I often want to reply. But the only way to reply, is to hit the Quote button!

We understand and have a couple of suggestions.

You might choose to click on the thread title at the top of the post. This will take you to the thread itself and you can read the entire thread and gain a wider view of the conversation. Then just reply, or highlight text and use the Quick Quote button before replying, or even Quote the entire post when that's appropriate.

Or if you do choose to click the Quote button when viewing Recent Posts, please consider deleting all but the most necessary content in the Quote box.

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Feel free to discuss any problems you have with quoting, either here in this thread or in a PM to a Staff Member.