Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

My Rant for Today

Rate this topic


Recommended Posts

This has been bugging me for awhile, so I'm just going to get it out there. Why must some of you quote the entire post right above what you're responding to? We all read from left to right and top to bottom here. :P Not only is there no reason for it (unless you're pulling out a specific sentence or section to respond to) but it makes the thread longer than necessary. I'm no moderator/admin or anything, but as a frequent reader, please stop! I want to read what you have to say, but do you have to make me scroll through repeated posts several times to do it? :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This has been bugging me for awhile, so I'm just going to get it out there. Why must some of you quote the entire post right above what you're responding to? We all read from left to right and top to bottom here. :P Not only is there no reason for it (unless you're pulling out a specific sentence or section to respond to) but it makes the thread longer than necessary. I'm no moderator/admin or anything, but as a frequent reader, please stop! I want to read what you have to say, but do you have to make me scroll through repeated posts several times to do it? :P

Because it's a way to get peoples attention, or because they mean to respond to the post in general, or because they are lazy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This has been bugging me for awhile, so I'm just going to get it out there. Why must some of you quote the entire post right above what you're responding to? We all read from left to right and top to bottom here. :P Not only is there no reason for it (unless you're pulling out a specific sentence or section to respond to) but it makes the thread longer than necessary. I'm no moderator/admin or anything, but as a frequent reader, please stop! I want to read what you have to say, but do you have to make me scroll through repeated posts several times to do it? :P

Because it's a way to get peoples attention, or because they mean to respond to the post in general, or because they are lazy.

Beautiful, delicious irony. :P :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why must some of you quote the entire post right above what you're responding to?

At a guess because some people don't know how to work the quote function. Others do it inadvertently.

At a forum I moderated, we deleted all posts with excessive quoting for a while. It worked, too. For a while.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This has been bugging me for awhile, so I'm just going to get it out there. Why must some of you quote the entire post right above what you're responding to? We all read from left to right and top to bottom here. :P Not only is there no reason for it (unless you're pulling out a specific sentence or section to respond to) but it makes the thread longer than necessary. I'm no moderator/admin or anything, but as a frequent reader, please stop! I want to read what you have to say, but do you have to make me scroll through repeated posts several times to do it? :P

Take THIS!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Because it's a way to get peoples attention, or because they mean to respond to the post in general, or because they are lazy.

Anyone can recognize when a quote is shorter but still has their name as the "quoted person", so the first reason isn't sound. Unless you mean to somehow get "everyone's" attention, which..I don't know how that would work. Given the existence of the "tl;dr" (too long; didn't read) phenomenon, I would think quoting an entire long post would tend to make people less interested in reading.

The second reason is sound in some situations. But regarding, for example, K-mac's post, if you were to respond to "the post in general", it would imply you're responding not only to her question but everything else she wrote, including the tone.

Besides, when responding to a "whole" post, there's often no need to quote it at all. Just say "X person: yada yada..."

Of course the third is no excuse...

[edit] hahaha, and then there's the issue of making jokes that were made two posts before...

Edited by musenji
Link to comment
Share on other sites

K-Mac, one possibility is that, while you are writing your post, someone else who writes faster than you, or less than you, might get a post in between you and the immediately preceding post. This could cause your post to appear in an entirely different context than you intended.

Then again, I suppose you can just name the person to whom you are replying, as I did here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I believe it's actually against the forum rules to quote entire posts unnecessarily, but it's difficult to enforce consistently, esp. when members sometimes get their panties in a twist because their two-sentence post was edited. There are quite a number of things you can do to make your posts more readable:

1. Paragraph breaks. Posts longer than 3 paragraphs are probably going to get skimmed instead of read, too.

2. Don't quote an entire post to add a brief comment. If you are going to quote, learn how to use the tags properly. If you need help, ask.

3. State precisely who you're responding to if you are not making a general comment.

4. Use proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Typos happen, but if your entire post looks like one gigantic typo then there is a problem.

5. If you goof, either fix it yourself (I recommend reading your own posts immediately after you post them so you can catch mistakes before the edit time elapses) or report it to a mod or admin so we can fix it the next time we log in.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...