Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

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Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by Alex Frakt »

We are adding some features to cut down on excessively long quotations and eventually to try to encourage members to trim quotes to just what is needed to make their point.

The first change is already active. If you click the "Reply with Quote" button on a post that contains multiple levels of nested quotes, only the most recent two levels will be copied to your new post.

The next change will most likely become active later today. This will place long quotes in a scrollable text box instead of displaying the entire quote. Note that if you do not like this feature, it can be turned off for logged in members. To turn it off go to User Control Panel - Edit Display Option (or just click the link) and set the option "Would you like quoted posts to be compressed with a scroll bar?" to "No".

We are still discussing further changes, but I expect to have them done shortly and I will announce them on this thread.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by FiveK »

Alex Frakt wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 1:34 am We are adding some features to cut down on excessively long quotations and eventually to try to encourage members to trim quotes to just what is needed to make their point.
Great idea!
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by runner3081 »

Love it!
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by yankees60 »

Alex Frakt wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 1:34 am We are adding some features to cut down on excessively long quotations and eventually to try to encourage members to trim quotes to just what is needed to make their point.

The first change is already active. If you click the "Reply with Quote" button on a post that contains multiple levels of nested quotes, only the most recent two levels will be copied to your new post.

The next change will most likely become active later today. This will place long quotes in a scrollable text box instead of displaying the entire quote. Note that if you do not like this feature, it can be turned off for logged in members. To turn it off go to User Control Panel - Edit Display Option (or just click the link) and set the option "Would you like quoted posts to be compressed with a scroll bar?" to "No".

We are still discussing further changes, but I expect to have them done shortly and I will announce them on this thread.
Thanks for the efforts on the part of all involved to make it a better experience for all forum participants.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by Sandtrap »

Excellent ideas and changes.
Huge thanks, also to moderators.
Aloha.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by LadyGeek »

Alex Frakt wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 1:34 am The next change will most likely become active later today. This will place long quotes in a scrollable text box instead of displaying the entire quote. Note that if you do not like this feature, it can be turned off for logged in members. To turn it off go to User Control Panel - Edit Display Option (or just click the link) and set the option "Would you like quoted posts to be compressed with a scroll bar?" to "No".
The change is now active. Posts with long quotes now show a scroll bar on the right-side of the quote.

For mobile devices - You'll also see the scroll bar but it can't be moved. Instead, just tap on the quote and scroll the quote itself.

Those wishing to test this new feature should post in: Please Try Out Test Posts Here
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by BogleTaxPro »

LadyGeek wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 11:52 am
Alex Frakt wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 1:34 am The next change will most likely become active later today. This will place long quotes in a scrollable text box instead of displaying the entire quote. Note that if you do not like this feature, it can be turned off for logged in members. To turn it off go to User Control Panel - Edit Display Option (or just click the link) and set the option "Would you like quoted posts to be compressed with a scroll bar?" to "No".
The change is now active. Posts with long quotes now show a scroll bar on the right-side of the quote.

For mobile devices - You'll also see the scroll bar but it can't be moved. Instead, just tap on the quote and scroll the quote itself.

Those wishing to test this new feature should post in: Please Try Out Test Posts Here
OMIGOSH. It's cool!!! Game changer!!! Wow!!!
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by yankees60 »

BogleTaxPro wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 11:56 am
LadyGeek wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 11:52 am
The change is now active. Posts with long quotes now show a scroll bar on the right-side of the quote.

For mobile devices - You'll also see the scroll bar but it can't be moved. Instead, just tap on the quote and scroll the quote itself.

Those wishing to test this new feature should post in: Please Try Out Test Posts Here
OMIGOSH. It's cool!!! Game changer!!! Wow!!!
Quite good! Thanks!
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by Galaxy8 »

BogleTaxPro wrote:
BogleTaxPro wrote:
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by rbd789 »

Thank you for providing the option to disable the scrolling. I think as a feature, it would be vastly improved if it automatically scrolled to the end of the quote rather than the start. I immediately found that in order to get context, I had to scroll in the box, to the end. This didn't seem better than just scrolling the main text without the box. I appreciate the effort, but also appreciate the ability not to use it.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by White Coat Investor »

Alex Frakt wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 1:34 am We are adding some features to cut down on excessively long quotations and eventually to try to encourage members to trim quotes to just what is needed to make their point.

The first change is already active. If you click the "Reply with Quote" button on a post that contains multiple levels of nested quotes, only the most recent two levels will be copied to your new post.

The next change will most likely become active later today. This will place long quotes in a scrollable text box instead of displaying the entire quote. Note that if you do not like this feature, it can be turned off for logged in members. To turn it off go to User Control Panel - Edit Display Option (or just click the link) and set the option "Would you like quoted posts to be compressed with a scroll bar?" to "No".

We are still discussing further changes, but I expect to have them done shortly and I will announce them on this thread.
Nice work Alex. I like to think I'm good at limiting the quotations used, but I recognize that most aren't. By the way, sorry I didn't have more time to chat with you in Minnesota. I would have liked to.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by Alex Frakt »

White Coat Investor wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 12:05 pm By the way, sorry I didn't have more time to chat with you in Minnesota. I would have liked to.
I tried to approach you a couple of times, but It was too hard to fight through your crowd of admirers :-)
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by Alex Frakt »

rbd789 wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 12:01 pm Thank you for providing the option to disable the scrolling. I think as a feature, it would be vastly improved if it automatically scrolled to the end of the quote rather than the start. I immediately found that in order to get context, I had to scroll in the box, to the end. This didn't seem better than just scrolling the main text without the box. I appreciate the effort, but also appreciate the ability not to use it.
The main improvement comes from not having to scroll through all the quotes of posts you already read.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by 2bits »

I wish this change was opt-in rather than opt-out.

Since both quotes and threads tend to be long, this change results in nested scroll bars, which are problematic in any GUI. The mouse wheel can "snag" on the inner scroll box and stop scrolling the page. Or, if one accidentally clicks in an inner scroll box, then PageUp/PageDn keys are "snagged" and stop scrolling the page, and with no visual indication of why.

Just login and change the preference, I know. But rare posters such as myself, and anyone just casually browsing by, will be logged out and get the changed behavior.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by biscuit5 »

a welcome change
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by celia »

OMG, Whose idea is these scrolls bars? I started seeing them both on my phone and on the computer today. I "quoted" a few posts just to see what tags were causing this mess but the underlining code looked fine.

For those of us who write long posts and quote a snippet from the middle or end of long posts, this makes it harder to find what you thought you read above, but can no longer find. As it was, if you start reading a quote that sounds familiar, it is (was) very easy to scroll to the end of that quote. So the "solution" is to just discard it from the center of nested quotes??? That means that after a few pages of posts, a new reader who starts by reading only the last page won't have a chance to see what the continuing discussion is about unless they go back and read hundreds of other posts.

This is just crazy. I think we should go back to what we are used to. Why make things even harder for newbies too?

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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by sycamore »

celia wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 8:49 pmI think we should go back to what we are used to.
Fortunately you or any member can go back to what you're used to. Please follow the directions, taken from the OP of this thread:
Alex Frakt wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 1:34 amNote that if you do not like this feature, it can be turned off for logged in members. To turn it off go to User Control Panel - Edit Display Option (or just click the link) and set the option "Would you like quoted posts to be compressed with a scroll bar?" to "No".
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by celia »

... and what do you consider a "long post"? If you look at the post from yankees60 above, the text in the scroll bar is only two lines less than displaying all of it without a scroll bar. So now we have to "punish" those who write short posts to hide part of it? Which do you think is easier to read?

I also tested out quoting yankees60 (as an example) and the result was VERY short as all the content in the embedded quote disappeared. This also means that if someone writes a short, but good post, and someone likes it by clicking on it and adding "+1", when the next person tries to quote it to add another "+1", the entire original post is then discarded.

Oooh, I hope we don't have future threads with more than one good idea in it that various people like. The "likes" will wipe out all the good parts whereas the posts that no-one cares to quote will remain in the thread.

Shouldn't we care more about the opposite (the good ideas)?
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by Alex Frakt »

So go back and quote the post that actually made the point you want to respond to instead of making readers try to parse through multiple layers of nested quotes.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by celia »

sycamore wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 9:15 pm Fortunately you or any member can go back to what you're used to. Please follow the directions, taken from the OP of this thread:
Alex Frakt wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 1:34 amNote that if you do not like this feature, it can be turned off for logged in members. To turn it off go to User Control Panel - Edit Display Option (or just click the link) and set the option "Would you like quoted posts to be compressed with a scroll bar?" to "No".
I've already set it to "no", but when I went back to quote yankees60, I can't see the text that used to be in the scroll bar. It is gone unless I follow the up-arrows (if the quote tag preserved it) to go find the original text.

The scroll bars so far don't look like they have anything to with long (or short) text. ALL the quotes that are nested more than 2 levels are gone. I have chosen to show all the nesting but when I clicked on a post that already showed 4 levels of nesting in it, all I ended up with is the outer post (which is now nested) and their first level of quotes. None of the other levels were there. :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops:
Last edited by celia on Thu Oct 10, 2024 9:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by Alex Frakt »

celia wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 9:28 pm I've already set it to "no", but when I went back to quote yankees60, I can't see the text that used to be in the scroll bar. It is gone unless I follow the up-arrows (if the quote tag preserved it) to go find the original text.
Not sure what you mean. All the text from the first two levels of nested quotes does appear. I turned it off and get the following.
yankees60 wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 11:59 am
BogleTaxPro wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 11:56 am OMIGOSH. It's cool!!! Game changer!!! Wow!!!
Quite good! Thanks!
Again, if you want to quote something that is nested 3 or more layers deep, you can go back to the original post and quote that. In this case the level that was cut off is:
Alex Frakt wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 1:34 am The next change will most likely become active later today. This will place long quotes in a scrollable text box instead of displaying the entire quote. Note that if you do not like this feature, it can be turned off for logged in members. To turn it off go to User Control Panel - Edit Display Option (or just click the link) and set the option "Would you like quoted posts to be compressed with a scroll bar?" to "No".
If that's what you want to respond to, it's better for those reading to do it directly rather than via a follow-up to a follow-up to the original.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by celia »

Alex Frakt wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 9:44 pm Not sure what you mean. All the text from the first two levels of nested quotes does appear. I turned it off and get the following.
yankees60 wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 11:59 am
Quite good! Thanks!
That's exactly what I mean (that what you saw was only 2 levels, not more as I was expecting) since I had changed the flag "Would you like quoted posts to be compressed with a scroll bar?" to "No". which doesn't seem to do anything.


Here's another example:
viewtopic.php?p=8071744#p8071744
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by Alex Frakt »

celia wrote: Thu Oct 10, 2024 10:39 pm That's exactly what I mean (that what you saw was only 2 levels, not more as I was expecting) since I had changed the flag "Would you like quoted posts to be compressed with a scroll bar?" to "No". which doesn't seem to do anything.
Now I understand.

We did two things, you can only override one of them.

The one you can override is the scroll box that will now appear by default if a quote goes beyond 200 pixels of screen height. You can turn that off, which means the entire quoted part will be visible to you no matter how long it is.

The second thing we did was cutting the number of nested quotations from 5 to 2 if you do a reply with quote. You can't override that as it is a global board setting. The reason for this change is that I feel that deeply nested quotes are a plague. They can be extremely confusing and they encourage the sloppy habit of quoting whatever is closest rather than the actual post you want to respond to.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by JayB »

Alex Frakt wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 1:43 am The one you can override is the scroll box that will now appear by default if a quote goes beyond 200 pixels of screen height. You can turn that off, which means the entire quoted part will be visible to you no matter how long it is.
I sometimes view BH on a tablet and sometimes on a laptop. I turned off quotation scrolling on my tablet because when I scroll through BH pages on a touch screen, an annoying number of extra scrolling motions may be required to move down a page compared to before if my finger/thumb happens to land on some scrolled quotes. And it is too cumbersome to try to dodge the quotation scroll boxes as I am navigating down a long page using the touch screen.

Turning off the scroll boxes is apparently a global account setting across devices. After I turned off the scroll boxes on my tablet, they are now off on my laptop too, which is undesirable. Is there any way to make the scroll box overriding a per-device setting?
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by LadyGeek »

JayB wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 5:44 am Turning off the scroll boxes is apparently a global account setting across devices. After I turned off the scroll boxes on my tablet, they are now off on my laptop too, which is undesirable. Is there any way to make the scroll box overriding a per-device setting?
Sorry, the forum software doesn't support per-device settings.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by CFM300 »

I applaud the changes and wish everyone would quote only the snippet relevant to their response anyway. :beer
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by LoveTheBogle »

I personally hate this feature. Many times I am on the road just browsing the site on my mobile device and it is very difficult to use on a mobile device. For example, many times, especially multiple long threads that are new to me, I'll start at the end and work backwards reading the long nested quotes and then the final reply. It helps me to get a gist of some of the discussion in an easy way and then I can determine if it is worth while scrolling through everything else. With the new feature, it makes the nested quotes very difficult to use on a cell phone since the scrollable quoted section isn't as wide and obviously isn't nearly as long up and down. Further, without being logged in, scrolling down to particular area such as 3/4 down the "page" to pickup where you left off, wanting to read new replies, requires many scrolls which if there are quotes then my thumb ends up in a quote and scrolls that instead of the page itself. I also personally think that the understanding of a discussion (and potentially argument between two parties) is totally lost because people are lazy and aren't going to read through scrollable quotes because it is simply easier not to do so.

My personal opinion is that this feature should be OFF by DEFAULT and can be turned on in the user control panel if desired. In other words, Bogleheads as customary and only different when logged in and only if the user wants it to be different.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by Mrs.Daisy »

Thank you. I love the change. Much easier to read.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by celia »

LoveTheBogle wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 1:10 pm . . . I'll start at the end and work backwards reading the long nested quotes and then the final reply. It helps me to get a gist of some of the discussion in an easy way and then I can determine if it is worth while scrolling through everything else.
I do this a lot too, and find it is best if I see the core discussion just a few posts before the end (where I'm about to post). I always minimize the amount I'm quoting too so anyone who quotes me doesn't have to quote as much.

But if the deepest nested quote is on an earlier page and the first quote of it is on another page, I'm going to give up and leave the thread.

I mostly use a phone these days and already have several screens open to Bogleheads (and IRS pubs, and tax bracket charts) which collectively run down the battery faster). To make things harder for me is just driving me away. In effect, the software is just deleting the history I need to be able to respond.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by sycamore »

The "only nest last 2 quotes" change helps with some use cases. And some use cases where the change didn't help. As usual, there are pros and cons, but it's not like the change is all bad or all good

The change may spur some posters to pay more attention to what they're posting and replying to. (The better posters were already doing this :))

In some cases, readers of posts will now have to work more to understand the thread, by clicking or scrolling back to prior posts. This affects me, but I'll be optimistic and say that I'll learn new navigation and reading habits.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by celia »

sycamore wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 3:06 pm In some cases, readers of posts will now have to work more to understand the thread, by clicking or scrolling back to prior posts. This affects me, but I'll be optimistic and say that I'll learn new navigation and reading habits.
It's one thing to be a reader. Anyone can do that, especially the lurkers (which are often more than how many are currently logged in).

But to be a good responder, it will be much harder. Eventually a thread will look "done" if the latest posts were quoting and agreeing. But an essential (now possibly non-displayed) point can then be overlooked unless the responder reads every post in their thread.

Oftentimes I see an important point be brought up in the second page, but that will only be read by those who carefully read the entire thread. The OP themself may not even notice it. A common example is for those who discuss when to start Social Security. I appear to be the main person who prompts them to analyze if they need to start Roth conversions instead. (The point is not to tell tell them to convert but to have the OP at least consider if it is needed.)
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by retiredjg »

celia wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 4:49 pm It's one thing to be a reader....but to be a good responder,....
I agree with celia that the needs of a "reader" and the needs of a "responder" are entirely different and these changes will affect "responders" much much more than "readers".

Having said that, the changes have not caused any problems so far for me. And they may not become a problem since it is possible to avoid the scroll bar.

If it were not possible to avoid the scroll bar, that change would be a disaster for me.

Time will tell.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by Stinky »

retiredjg wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 5:37 pm
celia wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 4:49 pm It's one thing to be a reader....but to be a good responder,....
I agree with celia that the needs of a "reader" and the needs of a "responder" are entirely different and these changes will affect "responders" much much more than "readers".

Having said that, the changes have not caused any problems so far for me. And they may not become a problem since it is possible to avoid the scroll bar.

If it were not possible to avoid the scroll bar, that change would be a disaster for me.

Time will tell.
I agree with retiredjg.

As a fairly frequent Forum responder who often pares down quoted text in a post, a scroll bar would really mess things up for me.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by Alex Frakt »

Stinky wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 5:41 pmAs a fairly frequent Forum responder who often pares down quoted text in a post, a scroll bar would really mess things up for me.
Why? I get 10 lines of quote text on my phone before the scroll starts. Isn't that enough to show what you are responding to especially if you are trimming the quotes? The scrolled text box does not show up when you are writing a post.

As for reading, I mostly read the forum on my phone. It's only taken a few attempted scrolls on a text box before my brain-finger interface has adapted to avoiding the yellow bits when scrolling. And it's so much nicer that the amount of scrolling per page has been cut down substantially.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by JoeNJ28 »

Love these changes, so many threads just get quote bombed by unreasonably long quotes that start pages ago and really you only need the last reply.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by yankees60 »

Alex Frakt wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 6:01 pm
Stinky wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 5:41 pmAs a fairly frequent Forum responder who often pares down quoted text in a post, a scroll bar would really mess things up for me.
Why? I get 10 lines of quote text on my phone before the scroll starts. Isn't that enough to show what you are responding to especially if you are trimming the quotes? The scrolled text box does not show up when you are writing a post.

As for reading, I mostly read the forum on my phone. It's only taken a few attempted scrolls on a text box before my brain-finger interface has adapted to avoiding the yellow bits when scrolling. And it's so much nicer that the amount of scrolling per page has been cut down substantially.
Today I've been involved in the forum first on my computer then on an Amazon fire tablet and now on a cell phone.

Overall I find it to be a big positive to have all the quoting in a condensed area. However, it is somewhat slower on the phone because of instead of putting my finger anywhere to scroll down I have to make sure I'm not putting my finger on a quoting section. That does not get me to the next post. But, as usual, I am adapting.

Again an overall positive for me because it's only a small percentage of the time I will be using the phone for this forum as using a phone is always my last resort for anything.
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by yankees60 »

JoeNJ28 wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 6:04 pm Love these changes, so many threads just get quote bombed by unreasonably long quotes that start pages ago and really you only need the last reply.
Quite true!
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by rob »

[Posts merged into here --admin LadyGeek]

I have to say the recent change to long quotes makes this site FAR LESS usable.... The scrolling flips to the quote as it goes underneath and stops scrolling the main conversation. While I may be in the minority - it's a TERRIBLE UI change IMO.

Edit: Don't let the cursor focus automatically swap to the quote on entry but insist on a click event in the quote to flip focus. The trend of flipping focus as the site like is a huge UI issue.
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MathWizard
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by MathWizard »

Impressive.

Thanks!
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celia
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by celia »

Alex Frakt wrote: ...
The second thing we did was cutting the number of nested quotations from 5 to 2 if you do a reply with quote. You can't override that as it is a global board setting.
I don't care if there is a scroll bar or not as I read on my own devices, but the extreme cut-back of how many nested posts you can see at the same time greatly impacts responders. Now I have to look on possibly other pages to put my nested quotes back together, to clarify who said what and what they were responding to.
The reason for this change is that I feel that deeply nested quotes are a plague. They can be extremely confusing and they encourage the sloppy habit of quoting whatever is closest rather than the actual post you want to respond to.
So you made this change based on your perceptions instead of asking what the responders want/need? As for me, I usually I try to quote from the last occurrence and use the nested boxes to be certain of who said what and what they were commenting on. The nested levels are a great visual tool that almost every reader can understand. But how many readers are going to know how to go find the post that used to be shown in the nested area, especially if it is on another page? ...and then go find the previous post before that?

It's human nature to recognize and be thankful for some new changes. But after you use them and they make more work for you, do you still like them?


Alex, I encourage you to record how many posts and page views there are for next week and compare it to last week and a week from a year ago. See if the forum is being used less or more, broken down by readers vs responders (ie, new posts).
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luminous
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by luminous »

I love the changes, thank you.
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HomeStretch
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by HomeStretch »

Thank you for the ability to turn off the scrolling for quotes. That’s helpful.

I wish there was a way to limit nested quotes by # of lines rather than limiting # of quotes to two. For threads by new/inexperienced OPs or for complex topics, it’s not uncommon to see well-crafted responses that contain (well-snipped) nested quotes of four (or more).
Last edited by HomeStretch on Sat Oct 12, 2024 7:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
prd1982
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by prd1982 »

I think the changes are great. Note that you can always click on the up-arrow next to the quoted item to show that entry, and use the browse’s back button to return.
student
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by student »

I don't like the change but I will get used to it.
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Beensabu
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by Beensabu »

I am enjoying not having to scroll past the same mess of forever nested quotes post after post (or the same giant image), especially when it is a back-and-forth between two posters. That used to hurt my eyes, and I didn't even realize it until now.
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FactualFran
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Re: Forum software upgrade bug reports and change requests

Post by FactualFran »

rob wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 7:05 pm I have to say the recent change to long quotes makes this site FAR LESS usable.... The scrolling flips to the quote as it goes underneath and stops scrolling the main conversation. While I may be in the minority - it's a TERRIBLE UI change IMO.

Edit: Don't let the cursor focus automatically swap to the quote on entry but insist on a click event in the quote to flip focus. The trend of flipping focus as the site like is a huge UI issue.
That behavior controlled by the browser. If the focus is on a scrollable area within a scrollable window (or tab), scrolling actions are to the scrollable area rather than the window. The action done to change where the focus is can be a configuration option of the browser. A common option is having to press the mouse (or other device) button to change where the focus is to the current location of the mouse pointer. Another option is to automatically change the focus to the current location of the mouse pointer.
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Ben Mathew
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by Ben Mathew »

Stinky wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 5:41 pm
retiredjg wrote: Fri Oct 11, 2024 5:37 pm
I agree with celia that the needs of a "reader" and the needs of a "responder" are entirely different and these changes will affect "responders" much much more than "readers".

Having said that, the changes have not caused any problems so far for me. And they may not become a problem since it is possible to avoid the scroll bar.

If it were not possible to avoid the scroll bar, that change would be a disaster for me.

Time will tell.
I agree with retiredjg.

As a fairly frequent Forum responder who often pares down quoted text in a post, a scroll bar would really mess things up for me.
It affects me as a reader too. I found it much harder to read posts with compressed quotes because to get the context of a reply, I usually find it necessary to see the quote. While ideally posters would be thoughtful about what they're quoting, I find it much easier to quickly scan an overly long quote and scroll past it than navigate nested scrolling.

Also keep in mind that even if posters changed their ways and start using only short quotes, this change would make a lot of old threads very hard to read.

Greatly relieved that there is an option to turn it off. I've done so, and think this feature should be default "off" rather than "on".
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yankees60
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by yankees60 »

I'm someone who tends to read all the posts in a given topic so I have an idea of who has said what recently. Also, rarely look at the quotes and, usually, just skip over them unless I am directly responding to only the most recent one.

With the above described quotes use (little) ... the change was a great improvement for me.
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exodusing
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by exodusing »

Excellent change. Especially on mobile.

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TheTimeLord
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Re: Changes to help cut down excessive quotations

Post by TheTimeLord »

To me it seems to make it very difficult to tell what the last poster was responding to, especially if it is a small section that they highlighted.
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