[ POLL ] Flooding a Thread.

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I seem to remember it being to a minimum of four at one time. I think it was on the old style WP site before it changed.

... I am considering making that limit the depth of quotes to eight, and this seems a useful thread on which to canvas opinions...

Really? There's one or two guys I roast so much I half expect any PM's I get to be from mods telling me to knock it off.

I'd agree, but there are posters who will act like doing this to their posts is out of the bounds of reason and unfair (even though all that's been done is removing the irrelevant and off-topic bits before responding).

A comment on option one in the poll.

Like many, I find the interminable quote trees a real distraction and almost impossible to read - I've seen them as deep as fifteen quotes. On a mobile platform, where manipulating threads and responses is already tricky enough, this must be virtually impossible to handle.

This situation isn't helped by the forum post layout, where the most obvious button which indicates it will initiate a response to a post is the "Quote" button. Many posters don't seem to associate the "Post Reply" button at the end of a post list as a viable means of responding to the post immediately above and that, plus the "Quote" button, often results in a tree of what would have been better handled as a series of individual responses addressing relevant, quoted parts of posts.

In the past I've tried asking on a thread that the quotes are kept to a minimum and quote exactly what the response addresses, to no avail. Sometimes "it preserves the context" is given as a reason - which is reasonable for maybe two or three quotes, but there's no reason to continually repost what often amounts to a significant portion of the entire thread, where the context already exists.

I have sometimes edited the more lengthy quote trees so a post quotes only what it is responding to from the tree - but it's a lengthy process and quite honestly, I have other things to do.

I am considering making that limit the depth of quotes to eight, and this seems a useful thread on which to canvas opinions.

So, have at it...

A comment on option one in the poll.

Like many, I find the interminable quote trees a real distraction and almost impossible to read - I've seen them as deep as fifteen quotes. On a mobile platform, where manipulating threads and responses is already tricky enough, this must be virtually impossible to handle.

This situation isn't helped by the forum post layout, where the most obvious button which indicates it will initiate a response to a post is the "Quote" button. Many posters don't seem to associate the "Post Reply" button at the end of a post list as a viable means of responding to the post immediately above and that, plus the "Quote" button, often results in a tree of what would have been better handled as a series of individual responses addressing relevant, quoted parts of posts.

In the past I've tried asking on a thread that the quotes are kept to a minimum and quote exactly what the response addresses, to no avail. Sometimes "it preserves the context" is given as a reason - which is reasonable for maybe two or three quotes, but there's no reason to continually repost what often amounts to a significant portion of the entire thread, where the context already exists.
I have sometimes edited the more lengthy quote trees so a post quotes only what it is responding to from the tree - but it's a lengthy process and quite honestly, I have other things to do.

I can't do anything about the post/buttons layout but there is this, under Posting Specifications in the site rules:
"Posts which disrupt the page format may be edited or deleted by the Moderators."

I feel that many of these quote trees often do disrupt the page format, to the point of it being unusable.
It's something of a (further) shortcoming of the forum software in that it allows these trees to grow indefinitely - but, there is an option available to limit the depth.

I am considering making that limit the depth of quotes to eight, and this seems a useful thread on which to canvas opinions.

So, have at it...

This is better than


Reply 1


Reply 2

-snip-

Mobiles are awkward at the best of times and usually I'm away from home (and the laptop).   On the laptop I usually at a bare minimum edit quote "stacking" out.  With my stumpy fingers doing that on a mobile, while possible, is just laborious.

I actually can't read quote on quote on quote posts let alone these flooding posts (I think it's dyslexia) so I either ignore them or just respond to the final response.