Limit quantity of nested quotes

[vividpixel]

I highly prefer forums over chat rooms such as Discord, but there is one bad habit I don't miss from the message board era: excessive quotations. Here's a screenshot to provide an example, not with intent to pick on anyone:



Though the screenshot is on a cell phone which exacerbates the issue, "mobile" traffic is a substantial amount of Web traffic, so it seems ridiculous for a post to use an entire screen length. The actual content of the post is one sentence! Even on a laptop screen or external monitor, it's a slight irritation scrolling past multiple duplicates of both posts and code as one works their way through reading a thread.

Here's my etiquette: If I'm responding to the newest post in the thread, I don't think there is a need to quote at all. When I do quote, I try to reduce it to the specific part of the message being replied to. I cannot think of a common purpose to nest multiple quotes within each other. You can click the green arrow icon () next to a person's quote to revisit their post in full when additional context is needed.

The MyBB software provides a built-in way to eliminate excessive quoting by setting a value for Maximum Nested Quote Tags. It should be found here if they have not changed their UI: Admin Control Panel -> Configuration -> Settings -> Posting

[SMcNeill]

We do have a limit for maximum quote levels.  I think it's 2 levels deep?  You should've seen some of the insanity before they were set!

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One problem is that even with the limit set, it only applies to auto-quotes.

Maximum Nested Quote Tags
The maximum depth level for quote tags. When quote-replying to a post, all nested quotes which exceed this threshold are automatically removed. Note that this value is only enforced when quote-replying - it is still possible to manually enter quotes to exceed this limit, and this setting will not affect posts already submitted. Set to 0 to disable the limit.

[vividpixel]

Edit: Ah, that does explain it if that setting only limits multi-quotes. That's silly, seems the software could easily strip them when nested in the post.

Hmm... doesn't seem to be working anymore!

[SMcNeill]

Notice my edited note above:

The maximum depth level for quote tags. When quote-replying to a post, all nested quotes which exceed this threshold are automatically removed. Note that this value is only enforced when quote-replying - it is still possible to manually enter quotes to exceed this limit, and this setting will not affect posts already submitted. Set to 0 to disable the limit.

A person can set as many quotes as they want manually, as you did.  That limit only applies to when the system does it for you. 

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Edit: Ah, that does explain it if that setting only limits multi-quotes. That's silly, seems the software could easily strip them when nested in the post.
Hmm... doesn't seem to be working anymore!

Example -- autoquote you and it gets nicely stripped.

[Jack]

I hate unnecessary quotes, I have complained about it but to no avail (not on this forum), so I have trained my mind to skip over these stupid quotes.
sometimes you have a huge quote followed by a simple thanks, total insanity
now if only there was an option to collapse quotes like some programming editors collapse blocks of code, I would certainly use that option
[edit]
whenever I see an elaborate post with multiple quote & response I skip it altogether, to me a forum should be like having a conversation

[bplus]

I agree quote is not needed when replying to previous reply but sometimes Steve sneaks one in while I am typing up mine ;-))

[Pete]

I just truncate quotes, that way I never have too much junk in my trunks... Oh wait, why are swimmers laughing at me?

Pete

[vividpixel]

Though my suggestion was not as simple to implement as I hoped, thanks everyone for entertaining it and/or me.
 
Would it be too extreme to remove the individual Reply button showing up on each post? We'd definitely leave the Quote button which can be used for one quote or multiple. That button already has to be followed up by clicking New Reply. If we remove the per-post Reply button, people would use New Reply when responding to a post, which by default does not quote a specific post!

I don't think most people intend to quote, but they click the nearest button to respond to the message. I don't typically expect a Reply button to insert a quote with most forum software I've used. Users can still quote every reply if they want, but this limits it to those who intentionally do so. That probably would not be enough people to gripe about.