Wedge

And using @xrunner wouldn't do that? (There is autocomplete for this...)

I knew that was coming. :)

In one sense it would yes. If you knew that function was available and you weren't a lazy member, it would be one means to reply.

But, if you were lazy and just used the buttons available, such as the quote button, it wouldn't solve the problem as well, because it doesn't link every other member to your profile (for reference) and it doesn't refer other members to the post you are making a general response to. :)

But, we all know members are lazy and if they see a button they will jump on it, such as the quote button. That's where the prtoblem originates. If there were two quoting options, the lazy bastards would at least have a choice. :o

But not in the quick reply box.

This is where I find what XenForo does interesting - they don't have a separation between quote and reply, they just have the reply button which autoquotes the message you're pressing Reply to. In essence, they're encouraging this behaviour. Not saying it's right, but it's interesting.

There's no solution for lazy people. Even if you give them an option they're going to take the option you don't really want them to take.Huh, you're right. More interestingly even if the full editor is pulled up in the QR area it doesn't do that.

Yes I do now see it links to a profile. Still learning this system.

This is something I've thought about often even a bit more detail than that. I really dont mind the misuse of the quote over reply button that much as in most cases I tend to read whats below the quote first and only if it falls out of flow in the topic that I may actually read whats quoted to see if it helps. Usually I'm only bothered when a really long post is quoted and has nothing to the actual reply.

My thought was more along the lines of making the "quote" button a "Reply To" button which autoquotes the post in the button was pressed, but, if the quoted post is more than say 3 or 4 lines we only show the first 3/4 lines then a more button to view the rest.

What XF did was to actually limit the height of quotes and make their contents scrollable, which in practice seems to be doing much the same thing.

Never looked at XF, but I think I'd rather expand and collapse with more and less options than scrolling, though there is the link I could use to go back to the original post (if it still exists) but that post could be pages back sometimes.

That would be an interesting solution. The problem with the quote button is it's used a lot as a way to reply to a specific member, because the member's name is at the top of the quote. I can point you to hundreds of examples on a forum (not mine) where it's misused daily. Many times there is no need for any of the text. I keep telling them the text is already in the thread for all to read, stop quoting huge blocks of text because it just clutters up the thread. But it goes in one ear and out the other.

People are lazy and when they see that quote button they use it whether it's needed or not. Now would they use the notification system like it is here instead of the quote button to reply? It's hard to predict. They might, given enough warnings over a period of time to stop quoting unnecessary text. If I'm not mistaken there is no obvious "notification" button on the reply screen (I'm looking for it now), so it would have to be drilled into their heads that it's available and to use it not only to notify members in a post but to use as a means to reply. But would that cause too many notifications that people would get tired of? I envisioned the notifications mainly as a way to get the attention of a member who might not necessarily be involved in a thread.

Remember, we're talking about (generally) lazy people that are involved in heated debates on the forum I'm talking about. I would like to see a "reply" button that simply provides a header with a name linked to the profile, and the post number as a link, with boilerplate intro language. Or this, there isn't any reminder of notification use at the bottom of the post box, just shortcut reminders -

shortcuts: hit Shift + Enter to use smart tag closer, Ctrl + B (bold), Ctrl + I (italics), Ctrl + U (underline), Alt + D (save draft), Alt + P (preview) or Alt + S to submit.

Maybe you could add "@Username to notify" there?

I'm not so sure notifications should be added for "quoted"/"reply to" posts because of exactly as you said, quoting tends to be misused quite often. Imagine you reply to a topic and the next person instead of just replying to the topic quoted you (misusing the quote button) now you get a notification that User A replied to your post in topic X and when you read it, it turns out they just misused quoting.... the number of times that can happen would simply annoy me to essentially disable being notified of a reply to a "post" of mine within a topic.

It's actually written already, just not installed here (@Dragooon makes mucho awesome plugins, yo)It's actually a plugin at present. Not that you'd know it's a plugin but it's a plugin. The only core notifications at present are likes and move-topic. Mentions is one of Dragooon's plugins as well (in fact the original notification system was a plugin!)

While it's certainly doable to do that, experience suggests that once people start seeing other people doing it, the need for explanation largely goes away.

What I would suggest in comparison is a list of all the people in the thread for easy clicking, sort of like the contact list in the PM area, but for all the people in thread so far if you want to reply to someone individually. Perhaps include your contacts if you want to include someone in the topic.

I'm not really enthusiastic for more buttons everywhere in the interface.

You know I do remember reading that quote notifications either existed or was coming at some point. I even checked my notifications to see if was there then decided I must have cooked that idea up in my head lol. It would just qualify as something I personally had to disable; well only if misuse was rampant.

Of course, one methodology of nailing that is simply to strip nesting of quotes so that when you quote a post you're only quoting that one post so you wouldn't get crazy amounts of notifications. So that when a post is quoted, only that post's owner gets notified.

That's what I'm doing ATM.