Unnecessary Quoting

[AQT]

Why do some (most?) of you guys do this? By unnecessary I mean quoting the post directly above your eventual post in order to just simply reply to it. I believe that most people, or at least they should, read posts in chronological order, and so the post following a post before it, if it is indeed a response to that post, would make sense. And then the quoting would come in if the posts being replied to are not directly above your eventual post, and even then only relevant portions would be quoted. Because I've seen people quote extremely long posts for no apparent reason and give a not as long reply. I've seen people engaged in ridiculously long quote trains that are also unnecessary.

So my question, to the handful of you guys who do this (and you know who you are, I'm hoping), is why? What drives you to do this, and do you even realize that you do it?

There's also a small population of members who do the exact opposite. They reply to a post that is not directly above theirs without any indicators, such as quoting who they are replying to or using the @whoever. But their numbers are low enough that it isn't really a big deal.

[THEWULFMAN]

I do it for many reasons. I go by the saying, better safe then sorry. I've had it happen here and on other forums where people get confused as to whom I am directing my post at. Rather than assume the reader of my post has an IQ higher than a grapefruit, I just include the relevant parts of the quote to avoid confusion. I often hide large quotes if I want to save space.

There's also little reason not to do it. Unless you're doing massive quote trains it doesn't take up a lot of room. I also try and be considerate of page size and reduce the size of the quote one way or another.


Also, I almost always use the option to skip to the new post in a thread, to save time. I doubt most people do it, but if they do they are skipping the entire thread to the first unread post. If the quote is included in that new post, it prevents anyone from having to scroll up looking for what the post is referring to.

Hidden/Spoiler:

[ARCTroopaNate]

I NEVER use quotes, so I think I'm one of the few who don't use them enough, but I completely agree with AQT as I've noticed it as well. There will end up being trains of 10 quotes and then it just makes it more confusing than it would be without the quotes!

[AQT]

I just include the relevant parts of the quote to avoid confusion.

Including the relevant parts is not the issue here. Including the entire post when it is directly above yours is.

There's also little reason not to do it. Unless you're doing massive quote trains it doesn't take up a lot of room.

Then what's the point of having the quote in your post if it's just right above yours for that reason? Just to have it in your post? And there are plenty of reasons why not to do it. It takes up even less space in your post if you do without the quote. And it just takes one quote to start a train of them.

Also, I almost always use the option to skip to the new post in a thread, to save time.

If you want to save even more time, just don't quote the previous post. You'll save a split second moving your cursor towards the end of that quote to type your message. And just because there are little reasons to not do something doesn't mean you should do it.

Overall, if you're going to be so lazy that you can't scroll up one mere post to bother understand a discussion chronologically, and/or if your reading comprehension sucks so bad that you have to see a post multiple times, once by itself and whatever several times in the posts of others, in order to understand what is going on, then you clearly have the right to be confused.

[Twilight_Warrior]

Habit.

If I'm replying to the OP, I don't quote. If I'm replying to a response, I hit quote. I do it for the post that's three above mine, so I do it for the one right above, too. If it's a long post, I try to condense it to what I'm addressing specifically, like just a few words, or a sentence or two. If it's a quote train, I'll condense it to the most recent one or two, or hide the train entirely. Plus, if someone else replies before I type my post out, I don't have to go and edit my post unless the new post is relevant to what I'm saying.

If people go to "First unread post," they don't have to scroll up to see which post I'm replying to. Some people don't even have to read it all, they can just see the post, think "oh yeah, I read that," then read my response.

Plus, people can just as easily skim over what I'm quoting as they can scrolling up to see what they missed. Two ticks on the scroll wheel in either direction is the same amount of work. And both are minimal.

[FragMe!]

@ wulfman I believe AQT is referring to things like what you just did in the hello/goodbye topic where you quoted patrick's post right above yours just to say hi, really not necessary

[Webster27]

I did this a few times and I don't know why I do it . So sorry to bother anyone and next time I'll have a better think about it...

[mswf]

If this thread is about unnecessary quoting, I'm going to ad in another request (while hoping I'm not being too much of a hypocrite):
Could people please stop quoting entire image galleries? If you want to refer to one specific one, you could just as well refer to it as "that second" or "that picture with the dude doing the thing". Because quoting entire image series, just for saying "those are nice" ads a ton of bytes to load, which is problematic for people with low bandwidth or those who sometimes check gametoast from mobile devices.
I don't care if I have to wait a long time for all images to load, but I do when it is caused by someone, who probably isn't aware of this issue, who doubles that long time.

[kinetosimpetus]

An image that's referenced twice in the page should only have to download once, but it definitely takes up space on the page. And question from me, why do people post huge pictures? To view the whole thing, I have to zoom out, and then I can see the pic, but not the text, and I doubt the image quality is really that much better that it needs to be larger than my monitor.

Quote trains, on the other hand, may not take up much space on the page if they are hidden, but if everyone quoted the entire post right before them, so the latest post contains the entire thread in quote train form, the amount of space used in the database to store it all would be MUCH higher than if everyone just posts without quoting, or only quote small parts when absolutely needed, and it would be more data to process every time.

Hidden/Spoiler:

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Quote train! (210 dashes)

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No quotes. (20 dashes)

And that's just after 20 posts. The quote train grows exponentially and has no benefit. Potentially a massive waste of space, processing, and bandwidth.

[ShadowWing]

I do it for the same reason many others do-- to add context to my post.

[AQT]

Adding context is not the problem here. But if the context is directly one post above you, then why bother? Most of you who are doing this are underestimating the intelligence of our members.

Both ARCTroopaNate and GAB have been here for a year or less, as evident by this topic. However, despite their short time here so far, they recognize that the majority of the members here are very intelligent. So for those of you who are quoting simply to help the few slow people we have on this forum, whoever they may be, I say forget them!

[ShadowWing]

It's not that I believe that other GT members are slow (they're not), it's just that I have this OCD-ish thing, and my posts feel incomplete (to me) unless I add some context.