ABOUT ATS: Warnings for excessive quoting, and how to quote

Excessive Quoting:
Each post has a handy "quote" button that allows you to respond to the member's post by automatically including their entire post as a quoted portion. The member's post you're responding to will be added to your post form as you author your response.

Please edit the quoted portion to the salient material needed to make your point! There is no need to repeat entire posts within the body of your response. Too many and too large quotes hampers the readability of our busy and populated message threads. Also, it adds unnecessary file size to the download of a thread page for members who are browsing ATS on modems (not everyone is on broadband, we're a very diverse global community).

ALSO, VERY IMPORTANT: Please avoid typing in the quoted portion. As members learn to use a discussion board like ours, they train their eyes to "see" different aspects of posts. For example, after you have experience with ATS, you rarely read everyone's signature because you know them. The same is true for quoted text, once you're familiar with the format of threads, your eye will place diminished importance on the text contained within the blocked-off quoted portion. If you create your response within this area, it will either be missed by people reading the thread, or it will create confusion as to which part of the text belongs to which author. And, since there is confusion, our busy moderators may end up giving you a warning for what appears to be a giant quote.


If you engage in excessive quoting, you will receive a "warning" and points penalty. Examples of what would cause a warning for an excessive quote are:

Quote the post immediately before yours: This makes no sense, and quoting the entire previous post above yours will result in a slight warning.

Quoting an entire post: Size doesn't matter unless the post is already small, less than 3 sentences. You will receive a warning if you quote an entire post that exceeds four or more sentences.

Compound quoting: If you quote someone quoting someone, this will result in a penalty.


As with multiple topics, our concern is mainly for board readability and the overall user experience. Try to imagine yourself as a new users, and how frustrating it would be to constantly have to scroll through repeated material within message threads.



Use this thread to post your comments about this information:
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[Edited on 19-5-2004 by SkepticOverlord]