The "no nesting" rule

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The "no nesting" rule

Postby Crescent Pulsar » Mon Jan 05, 2009 5:33 pm

Someone suggested I go here to make my case, so here I am. ;/

Anyway, I'm against this rule, as it's completely asinine. It should be changed (not removed). Reasons:

It's a nice convenience (that simply shouldn't be abused). And the alternatives of nesting make no real difference. In the first example, all you're doing is nesting with different separators between quotes. In the second example, you have the same amount of quotes, if it had been made into a nest, except it takes up more space.

You're just adding needless effort on our part, for responding to a relevant group of quotations. I suggest a limitation of three quotes in a nest, with a little wiggle room. So, if you simply quote post after post, you'll end up with quotes in a nest that aren't necessary for the response, and that sort of thing should be penalized.

Seriously. Allowing no nested quotes, but allowing other kinds of quotes, makes no sense. There's really no difference between them, until you nest too much. So, please, just set a limitation.

And if not, then why not remove the function that allows nesting in the first place?
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Postby FOG3 » Mon Jan 05, 2009 7:49 pm

As I understand it you're mainly arguing for a increase in quote depth.

Well the original rule was in response to people, and I use the term loosely, debating by quoting entire multi-page arguments making comments that did not necessarily even really address the quoted section and it just stacking up as these guys went forum page after forum page. I've noticed certain people have been seriously violating the intent of the rule by just stacking single depth quotes as well.

I think it would be more worthwhile to change the rule to something along the lines of:

"Unless you have a valid reason to quote another member's post verbatim, as in to emphasize what they actually said, the quote function is now off limits. Anyone engaging in debate henceforth will be expected to:

1) Summarize the position of the person they are taking issue with, as they understand it.
2) Why they disagree with it.
3) Their supporting evidence.

All in their own words."

This should be similarly enforeable, and give even less incentives to the underlying problem. First of all they actually have to read the other person's post, and then put it in their own words before they can fire off whatever which helps discourage hot headedness and encourage more understanding. Having to explain why they disagree and justify further discourages curt, terse, or otherwise responses and discourages the habit of stating something as fact and refusing to reference it to prevent it being challenged that I've seen now and again.
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Postby Ellen Kuhfeld » Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:12 pm

FOG3 wrote:"Unless you have a valid reason to quote another member's post verbatim, as in to emphasize what they actually said, the quote function is now off limits. Anyone engaging in debate henceforth will be expected to:

1) Summarize the position of the person they are taking issue with, as they understand it.
2) Why they disagree with it.
3) Their supporting evidence.

All in their own words."

Perhaps - but if I got into an argument and felt I'd been summarized either poorly or perversely, I sure would want to stack up a direct quote of what-I-said against what-they-said-I-said.

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Postby Crescent Pulsar » Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:25 pm

I'm not arguing for more quote depth: we've already got that. People can quote page after forum page if they so wanted with the two examples allowed in the rules. What discourages most people from doing that is that it takes more effort to do that.

Nesting quotes are only a victim of convenience and laziness. It's easier to pile the nest of quotes up because all you need to do is press "quote" to respond, and some people fail to realize that a bunch of the quotes that have been picked up in each successive reply are no longer relevant to the response given.

So I'm arguing that if people quote only what they intend to respond to, there should be no problem in how people go about putting the quotes together.

I'd simply like to have this convenience, since I'd prefer it and not abuse it. Been there and done that a looooong time ago.

I also notice that some people, for convenience's sake, make two or three posts in a row, each to quote separate posts. Usually double-plus posting isn't welcome at forums. Is it different here? If so I'd do that, myself.
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Postby lwf58 » Tue Jan 06, 2009 9:07 am

It's a rule of Sunny's, dating back before I became the host for the site. While I don't really understand all the reasons for it, the main intent is to prevent just what Fog3 mentioned, and one other: the fact that in other forums, people abuse the function by quoting entire posts just to make a comment on one small point, and then other people quoting that without editing. The other reason is that nested quotes tend to get out of control easily, and you end up with quote after quote after quote nested just for the person to add a sentence of their own. We've all seen posts where there were five or more nested quotes built up that way.

The rule is to make people think about what they are doing, because they often have to edit their response. It also forces a much neater appearance in the posts.

So why a ban on all nested quotes instead of just on ones that exceed a certain size or number?

That's simple. It's because it's much easier to follow and to enforce a clear-cut ban on all nested quotes than it is to try and set limits that are going to be subject to interpretation. How many are "too many"? Where's the dividing line between "this is okay" and "that isn't"?

The ban was a deliberate choice on Sunny's part to avoid the inevitable confusion a less easily understood ruling would have caused. I could discuss it with him - and I have done just that in the past - but in the end, it's really just a minor inconvenience. There are several ways to direct a reply, and quoting is only one of them.
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Postby Crescent Pulsar » Tue Jan 06, 2009 9:29 am

Well, it's kind of sad. Fukufics must have a bunch of hooligans since this problem doesn't occur at all at the only other messageboard I go to, and that's without any rule concerning it at all.

I think I was around when the rule was made. I can't remember exactly. But, really, in the end it'd just be mod/admin laziness to not allow nesting to some reasonable degree, since, so far, I'm aware of at least one other rule that hasn't been enforced properly on someone yet. Probably because a mod/admin themselves don't fully understand the rule, or, as noted before, they're too lazy to figure out where to draw the line. Shouldn't be too hard to do right now, I imagine, since Fukufics doesn't seem to be as active as I've seen it in the past.

But, yeah, Sunny can be stubborn. I need to bop her on the head, give her amnesia, and take advantage of her. Not in that way, you perverted fools! U_U;
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Postby Spokavriel » Tue Jan 06, 2009 12:06 pm

And then what would that do to the progress in all Josh's stories. No it cannot be allowed even if the lapse in memory would give you an advantage with the rules.

But really that kind of silliness is better for Spamville.
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Postby TerraEpon » Tue Jan 06, 2009 12:12 pm

Crescent Pulsar wrote:Well, it's kind of sad. Fukufics must have a bunch of hooligans since this problem doesn't occur at all at the only other messageboard I go to, and that's without any rule concerning it at all.


Oh I've seen it. People will just start to make "quote trees" as it were. It's really stupid and pointless, but then again, most forums aren't as well behaved as this one is, either...

That said, I agree that often two deep quotes make sense. Sometimes quoting only one person loses the context. But oh well.
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Postby Spokavriel » Tue Jan 06, 2009 12:46 pm

The problem with a nesting limit is that you have to become Depth police. Watching each and every quote to see how deep they are. Now with no nesting you just have to be able to notice a doubled line.

It's allot easier to spot in skimming.
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Postby Ellen Kuhfeld » Tue Jan 06, 2009 12:56 pm

There might be technical problems, too. Depending on screen size and browser used, your parser might not be able to display quotes that are nested too deeply. And the definition of "too deeply" would change from viewer to viewer. Easier to just say no.
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Postby Crescent Pulsar » Tue Jan 06, 2009 4:36 pm

Spokavriel wrote: The problem with a nesting limit is that you have to become Depth police. Watching each and every quote to see how deep they are. Now with no nesting you just have to be able to notice a doubled line.

It's allot easier to spot in skimming.

Ellen Kuhfeld wrote:Easier to just say no.

Which would support a part of my argument: that being laziness. And if we followed both "laziness" and "easier" principles in a policy, you'd bet that most things that would make a community possible would be restricted. Oh, the poor mods/admins! We wouldn't want them to do their jobs!

I've got no sympathy for mods or admins, because I've been both. For a while I had to do most everything myself, which is part of the reason why I couldn't come around here to annoy people for long periods of time. But I also had some helpful users anonymously point out problems in places I can't keep up with, which was made easier when the new forums had a function for reporting individual posts.

I honestly don't see what's so hard about keeping nesting in check, on both sides. It's not like you need to go to a "how not to nest senselessly" school. Well, I'd hope. ;/
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Postby Spokavriel » Tue Jan 06, 2009 4:42 pm

And we have that kind of help too. Just when it comes to nested quotes it's usually mentioned by the next poster and the quote rule is no quotes within quotes. I know it's unusual but normally even the comment about it is taken in good humor. It's often an accident the nest happened in the first place.
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Postby Yrael » Tue Apr 28, 2009 6:36 am

I have to admit I've always thought the nesting rule was one of the sillier rules I've come across on this site. I understand the purpose behind it, but honestly it's just a shortcut way of moderating a useful feature. Though I have seen abuse of it on other forums, it's a rather easy thing to fix via a temp ban.

That being said, wouldn't it be far, far less headache to just use a phpbb module that auto-truncates a quote down to a single or double quote?
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Postby lwf58 » Tue Apr 28, 2009 7:35 am

While that's outside my experience, I suppose such a thing might be possible. The thing is, an autotruncate might not contain the part the person replying meant to quote. It would always assume that the last quote section was the pertinent one.

Crescent Pulsar, I can throw your point right back at you. Nested quotes are a sign of laziness in the poster, not the administration. In other forums that allow them, I've seen endless examples where people hit the "quote" button and have entire chapters of stories repeated in their message without any snipping, just so they can add something like "I think this is a great story" at the end. Then the next person to come along hits "quote" and repeats the first person's laziness by having the whole darned story repeated along with the first person's comment, and just says "me too" after it all.

In both cases, of course, they could just use the "reply" button, but they don't. That sort of thing also happens when they want to talk about a scene in the story but are too lazy to snip it out and just quote the relevant part.

The number of times I see that sort of thing is purely disgusting, and pleas by other forum members for them to snip things down to a manageable level are often ignored.

Under our system that will not happen. While the first person would be within the rules by quoting the whole story, the second would not and would have to restrict their quote to the first person's comment, breaking the chain.

So while the rule may seen silly, it does serve a useful purpose. Saying it's a sign of laziness on the part of the administration is like saying "I'm mad because they won't let me be lazy!" and ignores the fact that we have to follow that rule too when we post, so it causes us just as much inconvenience as anyone else.
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Postby Dumbledork » Tue Apr 28, 2009 8:15 am

On Hawk's Fanfiction Forum there IS sometimes and overexaggerated use of nested quotes.
And that's the bottom line 'cause Dumbledork said so.

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