[RFC] Remove innermost quote

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EXreaction
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Re: [RFC] Remove innermost quote

Post by EXreaction »

I think to solve this, first we need to make sure we understand what the real problem is that we are trying to solve, them design a way to solve it appropriately.

Currently, the problem with unlimited quote depth is that if the quotes are nested too deeply (depending upon the browser window), messages will be stretched really long or be cut off and it becomes really difficult or impossible to read. This happens because we pad each quote by some number of pixels and display each quote the same (difficult to follow the message through quotes if it gets too deep).

One of the key items here is that output is dependent on browser width, so a mobile device might only work with 3 nested quotes while a large display might work with 20 nested quotes.

If this is the core problem with quotes we're trying to fix, using a fixed limit to the depth of nested quotes doesn't really make much sense. Rather, the display of quotes should be changed so that messages are not becoming stretched or cut off and following nested quotes isn't as difficult.

theallzaz
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Re: [RFC] Remove innermost quote

Post by theallzaz »

EXreaction wrote:What was the original intention for having limits on the number of nested quotes? Why do we still have the limit?
You can choose the limit in acp (General > Post Settings > Maximum nesting depth for quotes).

Im my forum i set it to 1. Having a lot of quotes generates a lot of repetition and thats why i limited them. I have a mod that remove automatically the quote, and it is really nice.
bantu wrote:
emosbat wrote:all quotes come from posts in topic so user can find them there.
That
is
just
not
true.
Thas why you can go to acp and disable the limit of quotes.

But for admins like me that doens't want the large number of quotes, removing automatically helps a lot. That message asking the user to remove the quote is a nice joke.

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brunoais
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Re: [RFC] Remove innermost quote

Post by brunoais »

I personally think that when the user tries to submit, he should be 1st warned about too many nested quotes and that the extra nested quotes will be deleted.
If he submits again with the same text, then the post is submitted with the extra quotes removed from the post (just as warned).
I have already had some surprises with nested quotes in some forums (namely IP.B and vBulletin) such that when I used nested quotes in a way that made sense for the situation caused me to lose a lot of content, specially because, at the time, I only had a tool to recover forms if they were not submitted.
You wouldn't believe how frustrating that was.

theallzaz
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Re: [RFC] Remove innermost quote

Post by theallzaz »

brunoais wrote:I personally think that when the user tries to submit, he should be 1st warned about too many nested quotes and that the extra nested quotes will be deleted.
If he submits again with the same text, then the post is submitted with the extra quotes removed from the post (just as warned).
I have already had some surprises with nested quotes in some forums (namely IP.B and vBulletin) such that when I used nested quotes in a way that made sense for the situation caused me to lose a lot of content, specially because, at the time, I only had a tool to recover forms if they were not submitted.
You wouldn't believe how frustrating that was.
I agree. Adding some kind of warn and after submiting removing automatically is a nice idea

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JoshyPHP
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Re: [RFC] Remove innermost quote

Post by JoshyPHP »

Ideally I'd prefer having the deepest levels automatically removed when the user clicks the "Quote" button, eventually with a non-intrusive warning displayed on the posting page indicating that the deepest level of quote was removed.

Most commonly, people "overquote" because they just click "quote" and don't bother about how much content they're quoting or even if it's relevant to the conversation. I suspect they don't want to be bothered by a confirmation form either. So as much as possible, don't disrupt the flow of posting and just remove the extra content before filling the posting form. And if they do manually create too-deeply-nested quotes, do present them with a confirmation form and what not.

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brunoais
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Re: [RFC] Remove innermost quote

Post by brunoais »

I agree with JoshyPHP suggestion. For me seems like a bit better than mine just because it is less intrusive and it can easilly work as well as mine's.

NicMason.com
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Re: [RFC] Remove innermost quote

Post by NicMason.com »

EXreaction wrote:I think to solve this, first we need to make sure we understand what the real problem is that we are trying to solve, them design a way to solve it appropriately.

Currently, the problem with unlimited quote depth is that if the quotes are nested too deeply (depending upon the browser window), messages will be stretched really long or be cut off and it becomes really difficult or impossible to read. This happens because we pad each quote by some number of pixels and display each quote the same (difficult to follow the message through quotes if it gets too deep).

One of the key items here is that output is dependent on browser width, so a mobile device might only work with 3 nested quotes while a large display might work with 20 nested quotes.

If this is the core problem with quotes we're trying to fix, using a fixed limit to the depth of nested quotes doesn't really make much sense. Rather, the display of quotes should be changed so that messages are not becoming stretched or cut off and following nested quotes isn't as difficult.
I agree. Perhaps just smaller left and right-hand margins will do the trick, as a partial solution... (please see attached image). Or (better) a completely new quote layout/design, that has no additional indentation at all, with each nested quote.
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phpbb3-quote-margins.jpg
Smaller Quote Margins
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NicMason.com
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Re: [RFC] Remove innermost quote

Post by NicMason.com »

What the perfect non-indented quote design could look like, I'm not quite sure yet, but here are a couple of ideas that might be useful in developing one:

+ The number of quotation-mark symbols (that appear above the quoted text) could be increased with each successive quote (in addition to the alternating background colours already in use). See attachment, using this in combination with very small indents.

+ Numbers/letters/symbols could be used to signify the nested depth of the quote.

+ Different colours to signify the depth (although colours are not very "accessible").
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phpbb3-quote-margins-003.jpg
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EXreaction
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Re: [RFC] Remove innermost quote

Post by EXreaction »

Looks perfectly readable with smaller margins in the first one and pretty readable in the second one. I think that first one would be a great start to this problem.

theallzaz
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Re: [RFC] Remove innermost quote

Post by theallzaz »

Changing the style would be nice too. But i think we are changing this topic scope. This topic issue isn't related with the style, but the problem is: as admin, you can already set a limit to the depth for quotes. Right? But if you does that, when the user tries to Submit a message with quotes in excess, he is forced to manually remove it. If i am quoting a post with a lot of words, it becomes a boring task.

I think if i'm limiting the depth for quotes, obviously I want them to be automatically removed. The poster don't care with the forum quote limit, so is not nice to ask him to manually remove it. Well, just my opinion

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