How do I nest quotes in replies?

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tggzzz

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I've just started using this forum, and I've encountered a problem that will significantly limit its usefulness for me, and I presume others. It is an obvious use-case that has been standard practice for >30 years (starting in usenet, of course), so I presume I'm missing something simple.

It is obvious how to reply to a simple message, including that simple message as a quotation. But how do I reply to a message that includes a quotation, including that complete message (i.e. including its quotation) within quotes?

In other words, how do I nest quotations in replies?

Without the ability to do that, necessary context is lost resulting in a stupid useless message such as:
Yes
Click to expand...
But not if the voltage is too high.
​

instead of the far more informative, useful message:
Shall we use the oscilloscope
Click to expand...
Yes
Click to expand...
But not if the voltage is too high.
​

That is so obvious, I'm sure I'm just being dimwitted, but I'd be grateful for enlightenment.
 

About the only thing I know to recommend:

(a) copy and paste text to your reply field,

(b) highlight it,

(c) click the quote embed tool.



----------------------

I guess you already know you can enclose someone's entire post, by clicking 'Reply With Quote'.
 

I usually select all the posts that I want quotes from using the Multi-Quote Msg at the bottom of the posts.

Then I just move text around and add all the
stuff around what I want, occasionally I make a nesting mistake and have to edit my message.
Click to expand...
 

BradtheRad said:
About the only thing I know to recommend:

(a) copy and paste text to your reply field,
(b) highlight it,
(c) click the quote embed tool.

guess you already know you can enclose someone's entire post, by clicking 'Reply With Quote'.
Click to expand...

Yes indeed, that is how I created my first message. But it seems so primitive and crude compared to the way other (more ergonomic) forums work. Feels like a return to the 1980s

It is a significant and unnecessary disincentive to the board, and hence to my helping other people.
 

 

Then you didn't understand my reply.

You add the nesting in, without having to resort to grabbing the text from previous posts as all the information is already populated in the reply window. All you have to do is perhaps delete a few end quote tags and move them somewhere else to get what you are after. I don't find it that bad, but hey if you don't like it don't use the board.
 

tggzzz said:
It is obvious how to reply to a simple message, including that simple message as a quotation. But how do I reply to a message that includes a quotation, including that complete message (i.e. including its quotation) within quotes?
Click to expand...

Such a concern would be an issue if would be allowable to members delete their own posts, nulling the reply logic, but this can not be done what ensure the sequencing of discussion.

On the issue itself, my personal opinion is that the nesting answers gathering into a reply just to say few words, tends to pollute the topic with redundant information.
 

andre_teprom said:
Such a concern would be an issue if would be allowable to members delete their own posts, nulling the reply logic, but this can not be done what ensure the sequencing of discussion.
Click to expand...

I really don't understand that point.

Notice that it isn't possible to determine what you mean by "such a concern" without flicking back arbitrarily far into the threads, and then mentally tying all the loose ends together. And surely we can agree that accurately passing meaning from one person to another is the whole purpose of a bulletin board like this - and therefore anything that impedes the transfer is poor.

Yes, I realise that in this special case it is (probably, but of course I cannot tell while I am writing this) only necessary to look at the previous message. But on the more interesting and fruitful discussions, that won't be the case - you only have to look at other boards to find concrete examples.

On the issue itself, my personal opinion is that the nesting answers gathering into a reply just to say few words, tends to pollute the topic with redundant information.
Click to expand...

Oh, if you get idiotic "+1 me too" posts, then I agree. But surely this board is aiming to encourage detailed technical discussions amongst people with some personal discipline. For example the ability to include LaTeX maths is a significant benefit - and not something that wittering idiots would need.

Or am I mistaken?

- - - Updated - - -

ads-ee said:
Then you didn't understand my reply.
Click to expand...

I think I did.

If I use "reply" then no context is quotes/included, as expected.

If I use "reply with quote", then only the previous message is quoted. The context of that message (i.e. quotes in that message) is completely omitted.

If I use "reply with multiquote" then I mix previous messages in quotes, but the context of those messages is omitted. I've only seen multiquote used on rare occasions, whereas the nested quotes are traditionally used on most messages - see any other bulletin board for examples.


Could you, using message #8 of this thread, please show me the results of doing that, and tell me in simple easy to follow steps exactly what you did. My apologies for being dense.
 

As far as I understand, Edaboard has no feature for generating nested quotes automatically, without manually inserting quote tags. That was my impression before and apparently there's no hidden feature to make it somehow

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm willing to agree that the feature might be useful to some extent. Personally I didn't need it quite often

I also must agree with andre_teprom that I see all-in-all more useless (particularly excessive) than useful quotes at Edaboard. But that can't be hold against the feature as such.
 

Now I'm really confused.

As far as I am concerned I did not "update" message #8. I did, however make two separate replies to different posts that were making different points.

Is it really the case that this board
  1. merges separate posts
  2. omits context
without bothering to have the courtesy to tell me that it was going to significantly change what I had done? All sane systems that weren't written by the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation would give the user the option of choosing what the user wants to do. (For the humour impaired, see **broken link removed**)
 


That's a sensible reply that appears to be correct.

While I agree with the potential problem that undisciplined use of nested quotes can lead to unnecessarily long replies, in practice all other boards seem to get by perfectly well.

I think the use-case I described in msg #1 is a very realistic and valid one, and one that makes comprehension significantly easier and therefore better. And that's got to be important with detailed technical subjects (although it probably isn't if you're discussting which car Jackie Kennedy drives - oops that's showing my age )
 

tggzzz said:
As far as I am concerned I did not "update" message #8. I did, however make two separate replies to different posts
Click to expand...
There is a system policy that automatically groups consecutive messages posted within a given period (if I remember correctly, 1 minute) into the same body.
 

andre_teprom said:
There is a system policy that automatically groups consecutive messages posted within a given period (if I remember correctly, 1 minute) into the same body.
Click to expand...

Stunning; sounds like some marketeer/developer being "too clever by half", and not seeing how things fail in the field. Facebook fell into that trap last week, when they automatically and without permission re-published a picture of a dead child on their parent's timeline. Cue many headlines.

IMNSHO a very good principle is that you should strive for "the least surprise" - if you don't then people feel controlled by machines, whereas it should be people believing they are controlling the machines.

One of my sigs is a >70yo quotation that is timeless:
"Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away"
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
​

It is a shame if the medium obscures the message!
 

Here's your quoted post #8, incl. original quoted posts:


  • 1. Open the post you wish to answer to with the Reply With Quote button. Remove the text you don't want.
  • 2. Open all the other posts you want to multi-quote in different windows with the Reply With Quote button. Remove the text you don't want.
  • 3. Collect the strings from the other windows and put them into the right locations of your main answer window.
  • 4. Repeat #2-3. if necessary.

I admit this is 1970/80s practice, but as you (and I) were usenet users ... ;-)

I'm sure you knew the procedure before.
 


Apologies for lost context, of course!

Oh, I could work out several procedures, but all of them **** bricks and are highly error prone. The computer should do the donkey work, not me. But you know that, of course!

Deleting context makes it difficult to hold subtle complex conversations. The net effect on this bulletin board is that it will be biassed towards shallow simple answers to shallow simple questions. Shame; it could so easily be so much more - and could gain so much more advertising revenue if it had a wider audience.

See eevblog (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php) for an example of how complex interesting discussions work in practice.

- - - Updated - - -


Apologies for lost context, of course!

Oh, I could work out several procedures, but all of them s u c k rocks and are highly error prone. The computer should do the donkey work, not me. But you know that, of course!

(Sorry for putting spaces in that perfectly usable sensible word - this BB descides to asteristk it out! I wonder what it will think of where a pilot works, the **** pit

Deleting context makes it difficult to hold subtle complex conversations. The net effect on this bulletin board is that it will be biassed towards shallow simple answers to shallow simple questions. Shame; it could so easily be so much more - and could gain so much more advertising revenue if it had a wider audience.

See eevblog (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php) for an example of how complex interesting discussions work in practice.
 

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