Quote tool

[kindofblue]

You're obviously able to quote like this

if you're familiar with that code, but for those who aren't, which I can tell many, many people here aren't, why don't we have a button for quotes like EVERY OTHER FORUM does?

[BrooklynGuy]

Yes. Buttons would be helpful....especially since the help section says there are buttons, but they apparently do not exist on this forum. See quote below:

"Code Buttons and Clickable Smilies
These controls allow you to quickly and easily enter vBcode into your posts and messages. To use them, simply click the appropriate buttons or select items from the lists to enter vBcode.

There are three editor modes available: Basic, Standard and Enhanced mode. When using the Basic editor, there are no vBcode buttons to assist your editing. You must enter any vBcode markup manually in this editor.

When using Standard mode, highlight the text you wish to modify and press the appropriate button. This will place the proper vBcode tags around the selected text. Pressing a button while not having any selected text, will insert vBcode tags at your cursor. You may then enter your text between the tags.

When using the Enhanced mode, pressing a button will modify any highlighted text. This mode is a WYSIWYG mode, What You See Is What You Get, whereas your final post appears the same while being edited. Clicking a button while having no text selected will not have any effect.

To use the clickable smilies, simply click the smiley that you want to insert into your message, or click the Show All Smilies link (if available) to access the full list of smilies."


Please, either add buttons (first choice), or change the instructions to eliminate the section about buttons existing (second choice).

Thank you.

[screwitlah]

On other forums I just press the "quote" button on a post I'm replying to and the quote and [quote] tags are neatly written for me in the reply box. but on CC I have to copy over the post being quoted and place the quote tags manually. why don't they make it easier to quote?

[BrooklynGuy]

Moderators: I understand that you are busy. However, it is a bit frustrating when our suggestions are not answered or even acknowledged with a response.

[OKgirl]

I really do wish there was a functional quote button. Even the box you check to quote the message in reply doesn't work. It gets annoying when people 1) Just copy and paste without anything that says that they are quoting, or 2) Decide to put quotation marks around it, but forget to close the quotes. Either way, it's just annoying

[DonnaL]

Yes, this is the only forum I've ever been on that doesn't have a "quote" button next to the "reply" button. And it is a pain to have to type in the code manually every time I want to quote all or part of someone's post. How hard can it be to make this possible? It's on other vbulletin forums.

[Billyboyka]

Pretty site, congratulations!

[kyledavid80]

As a related issue: is there a quick key combination to get the quote tags? Like, ctrl+i will automatically give the italics tags, but ctrl+q doesn't give anything... is it possible?

[tokenadult]

The quotation tags are easy enough to learn, and are documented on a page

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/misc.php?do=bbcode

that is reachable from the Go Advanced view of replying to any forum post, and also by drilling down from help and rules. Lots of users have learned how to quote excerpts from earlier posts, and lots of users have shared the knowledge in earlier public replies in various threads. Moreover, even more users have learned how to drag with the pointing device (usually a mouse) to select text, and how to copy and paste that between quotation marks. That's all very standard knowledge for current personal computers.

So the real issue here is whether CC should be just like every other forum, and make it easy to one-click quote an entire post as soon as one starts composing a reply. I am a moderator of another online forum where that capability of the forum software is enabled. I agree with the management of this forum that that small increase in convenience doesn't make up for the large increase in annoyance when some users (maybe not you, not ever) quote too much of a preceding post and turn a thread into a tedious "he said, she said" metadiscussion. The current default settings seem to work just fine in keeping CC one of the most informative and helpful online discussion forums on the planet. The various members of the moderation team have discussed this issue with the forum owner, and the management consensus is that the easy quote button is not a feature we need to enable on College Confidential.

[xiggi]

I have to agree with Tokenadult's presentation. Too many sites have been ruined by an excess of features, and, next to signature, images, and animated smilies, excessive quotations is one the biggest culprits. The easy quoting tool adds the dangers of multiple quotations boxes embedded in quoted posts ... an absolutely ugly feature.

While there is always room for improvement, keeping the site as clean, uncluttered, and fast-loading as possible should remain the paramount objective.

[AJH2008]

I once tried clicking the number on the post, it opens another window/tab and in the top says "Quote Tool" but doesn't work. I agree, i want a quote tool

[tokenadult]

I once tried clicking the number on the post, it opens another window/tab and in the top says "Quote Tool" but doesn't work.

It would be a kindness to those of trying that link to not have the link appear. I've drawn the attention of management to this thread, and I hope the programming staff hears about that issue. (Yes, my quote tags above were typed in by hand.)