Suggestion for posters who quote manually

TurtleMeister

Many times posters will quote someone by typing/paste in the quote manually, ie., not using the quote button. If you do this, then please be sure to supply the username of the person you are quoting. It's easy to do:

Note: I had to deliberately misspelled quote so that the software would not think I was actually trying to quote someone.

Here's what the above looks like:

The only thing missing is the link button. You could add that in manually, but it's a little more trouble to do. Just the username is good enough in most all cases.

Thanks
Turtle

phinds

Why not just ask everyone to USE the quote button? I mean, how hard is it?

TurtleMeister

Yes, normally it's better to do it that way. But I myself have done it manually for various reasons. One reason I have done it manually is that I do not know how to put a quote inside a quote using the quote button. Example:

Other reasons are that I may start a reply and then decide that I want to quote someone else. Sometimes it's just easier to do it manually. Or maybe there are techniques for using the quote buttons that I'm not familiar with? I know how to do multiple quotes, but that doesn't always give me what I want.

surajt88

I find it hard to use the quote button when posting from a mobile. It seems much easier to copy-paste n quote manually.

Ryan_m_b

The disadvantage of manual quoting is that it removes the ability to click through to the post in question which is desirable if the quote is a section of the whole post or if one wants to follow a conversation that isn't the only one going on in the thread.

If you do like to manual quote I don't see why you don't first click the quote button and copy the reference to the post to be pasted at the start of what you then use.

mfb

What I usually do, if I reply to multiple different posts and they are not directly above the new post: Open the thread in a second tab, press quote there, copy the text in the first tab. If necessary, hit "back" in the second tab and repeat with a different post.

If I quote several parts of the same post (e. g. 3 different questions), I usually add quote tags manually - without a user name, as the first quote contains nick+link.

OCR

If you are using Firefox, and just click the 'Reply to Thread' button, look at the address bar near the top of your screen.

You should see the URL of the actual post that Ryan_m_b made...

w ww.physicsforums.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=4214830

I deliberately broke the link by leaving a space between a 'w', above.

Anyway, the post number that Ryan_m_b made is 4214830.

You can copy that number from the address bar and paste it in your reply text box to get
You get the same number if you click on the post number count → #5...

That's how you can get the "View Single Post"... it should look like this in your address bar:

w ww.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=4214830&postcount=5

Again, I broke the link by leaving a space between a 'w'.

If you click the "QUOTE" button in Ryan's post, you get this in the address bar:

w ww.physicsforums.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=4214830...

This will actually show up on here as...

[QUOTE =Ryan_m_b;4214830]The disadvantage of manual quoting is that it removes the ability to click through to the post in question which is desirable if the quote is a section of the whole post or if one wants to follow a conversation that isn't the only one going on in the thread.

If you do like to manual quote I don't see why you don't first click the quote button and copy the reference to the post to be pasted at the start of what you then use.[/QUOTE]



Or, without breaking the link as I did with a space between QUOTE and = as...


Of course, the sensible thing would be... disregard all of the above, and go here:

http://www.physicsforums.com/showpos...13&postcount=2

and

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=617567



OCR...


mfb has some good methods, also.

TurtleMeister

Thanks for the helpful suggestions mfb and OCR.

Studiot

Well I have found the quote button a pesky pain.

Take the post by OCR for instance. I have no quarrel with it it chose it because as a slightly longer one it illustrates many of my points.

I tried a few things with the quote button but have no idea how to get it to play the tricks I want.

1) I consider it bad manners to simply quote an entire post to answer a point. This often takes up so much space on the screen that I can't see the relevent parts or answers. Further it greatly lengthens the thread on screen so obscuring an overview of several pithy replies.

2) I tried to highlight one line in OCR post and click the quote button.
Result : The complete post in quote tags.
The problem here is that I can no longer see the line I wanted to reply to and have to shuffle back and fore to refer to it.
3)
The alternative is to copy the relevent line whilst viewing that post then select quote tags and insert.
Result a pithy quote that can be replied to compactly.

I agree that a reference to the quote origin is good and try to supply at least a post number - some forums do this automatically or have the post numbers on view during composing and editing.

Evo

Just select "quote" then delete what ever you don't want, only takes a second, requires less effort than other, more complicated suggestions, and people will know which post you are referencing. If you are quoting any post except the one right above yours, it is extremely annoying to try to hunt back through sometimes pages of posts. Why do people want to go through so many steps when "quote", highlight unwanted text, and delete is so easy?

jtbell

Right, when the editing screen comes up with the quoted material in it, you can delete part of it just like you'd delete some of your own stuff while you're fiddling with it. Just make sure to preserve both the opening and closing quote tags. We generally encourage people to "trim their quotes" so they include only the specific points that they're responding to.

The one major exception to this is in the Homework Help forums, where we encourage the person who first responds to a question, to quote the entire question. We've had problems with people deleting all the content from their posts after getting their question answered, presumably because either (a) they don't want other people in their class to benefit from it, or (b) they're actually cheating on a test and they want to erase their tracks. But they can't delete the quotes that other people have made, mwahahah!

OCR

Yup... that is the best way.



OCR

Studiot

Yup that's exactly the problem.

Windows or IE or something is too clever by half and all too often the selection 'spreads' over unwanted characters trying to be 'helpful. It seems to have an especial affinity for parts of tags.

So the 'quote all and delete' process fails dismally.

This also happens with things like the sub and superscript.

I didn't know this, very interesting.
Thank you for making that clear.

Evo

I don't have problems and I use IE. A cursory glance to make sure that the tags are in place at the beginning and end is quick and I believe that all posts should be proofread anyway, it prevents having to go back and make edits after posting.

AlephZero

Are you trying to select text with the mouse? Hold down SHIFT and use the arrow keys instead. Experiment to find out what Shift + PageUp/down, Home, End, etc do as well.

Studiot

All that does for me is shift the window around. It doesn't select anything at all.
Neither does it extend a selection already started.

But thank you anyway for the suggestion.

jhae2.718

The obvious solution is to spend $10M over a period of 5 years to develop the ultimate forum quoting AI.