Post quoting ... and quoting ... and quoting ... and ....

[chrysylys]

Can y'all look into a way to truncate long and/or nested quotes?  I'm getting kind of tired of wearing my scroll button out due to long posts being quoted multiple times, or people requoting others and ending up with six or eight nested layers of quotes.

It would be nice if people would voluntarily edit the post they're quoting down to just the relevant few words.  But since they don't, can't, won't or don't know how to, perhaps there is a way the system can hide most of it?

[berserkerplanet]

15 swipes on my phone to plow down to the bottom of a post full of nested quotes only to find a smiley at the bottom is beyond annoying. Particularly because there are often a dozen of those posts in a row where 2 posters are going back and forth fully quoting with no truncation.

On the desktop I'm blocking some of those posters completely (their posts just disappear), but that's not an option on the phone.

When the amount of quoted content in a post exceeds the reply content by a factor of 10 you aren't doing it right,

[pjcdn2005]

You can block posters now?

[berserkerplanet]

Have been doing so since 2013 before Lithium on Liveworld.

I wrote a Greasemonkey script called Annihilator that I've added to since then with little doodads for my own use. Publicized it back then and got slapped for "hacking eBay infrastructure" which is a load of schmazzle as it is a client side filter no different than an Adblock filter (or maybe the vacay was for the homepage ad remover 🙂  A couple of people used Annihilator as I recall.

It blocks based on an internal blocklist, and has configuration options for how to indicate the blocking (just disappear the posts, or insert simple text line or more elaborate html replacements), can highlight the first post in a thread that you have posted in (my way of easily blasting through posts any checking to see if I need to respond - I don't use jump to new post feature in forums), can highlight all your posts in a thread, remove signatures (needed if not logged in), has the code snippet for turning the Lithium disabled Firefox spellchecker back on in forum replies, etc.

Can also disappear threads on the thread list page by thread number or partial text match. Annoying sticky threads, annoying "my sales are zero" threads with 12 pages of ranting, etc.

Has some minor display/formatting bugs since last major forum change and a "bug" where the post numbering is incorrect for a removed post not on the 1st page (required too much work to fix that, I don't care, and it really doesn't matter)

Currently 487 lines of code and comments, and might need a few super minor tweaks to be used in newer Firefox versions (running it in FF3.6.24 and FFFF31 but haven't bothered setting up newer FF versions with Greasemonkey and testing since no one else uses it)

Anyone that wants to play with it can PM me. I think the current version is up in my webspace.

[doug@ebay]

An update. We're not able to limit the number of quotes in a post, but are looking into other options. I've passed suggestions on and we will look at options and update the Community.

If you see good examples, please post links here and I'll send them over.

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@chrysylys wrote:

Can y'all look into a way to truncate long and/or nested quotes?  I'm getting kind of tired of wearing my scroll button out due to long posts being quoted multiple times, or people requoting others and ending up with six or eight nested layers of quotes.

It would be nice if people would voluntarily edit the post they're quoting down to just the relevant few words.  But since they don't, can't, won't or don't know how to, perhaps there is a way the system can hide most of it?

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[mallontown]

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doug@ebaywrote:

An update. We're not able to limit the number of quotes in a post, but are looking into other options. I've passed suggestions on and we will look at options and update the Community.

If you see good examples, please post links here and I'll send them over.

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@chrysylyswrote:

Can y'all look into a way to truncate long and/or nested quotes?  I'm getting kind of tired of wearing my scroll button out due to long posts being quoted multiple times, or people requoting others and ending up with six or eight nested layers of quotes.

It would be nice if people would voluntarily edit the post they're quoting down to just the relevant few words.  But since they don't, can't, won't or don't know how to, perhaps there is a way the system can hide most of it?

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great news, it was so hard to understand messages when someone decided to remove posters names. Leave the whole post with quotes as it's always better to get the whole story instead of a snippet.

[chrysylys]

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doug@ebaywrote:

An update. We're not able to limit the number of quotes in a post, but are looking into other options. I've passed suggestions on and we will look at options and update the Community.

If you see good examples, please post links here and I'll send them over.

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Limiting nested quotes to the most prevuious one or two is a really basic function of most board software packages.  Very, very few allow more than three nests.

Truncation is more complex to me, but I've seen some where only the first two lines or so of a quote appear in normal contrast and the rest 'fade out', but can be seen if clicked on.

Boards are chock full of examples and I've seen some 7 layers deep ...  like a bad bean salad.  I try to find some of the worst examples to horrify L into acting.

[chrysylys]

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doug@ebaywrote:

If you see good examples, please post links here and I'll send them over.

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This and several posts before and after in that thread:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Bidding-Buying/Report-Seller/m-p/28122496#M250005

I count 7 layers in that one post.

[chrysylys]

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doug@ebaywrote:

If you see good examples, please post links here and I'll send them over.

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Another 7 bagger: 

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Bidding-Buying/Seller-won-t-send-purchase-to-mail-forwarding-address/m...

[hidy-hoo]

@chrysylys  Would it be possible for you to post a picture of the type of quote feature that you would like to see implemented here...or at least describe it?  This is the only forum that I post on so I am not familiar with a quote system that would be better than what we have now ~ thanks! 

[mallontown]

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@chrysylyswrote:

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doug@ebaywrote:

If you see good examples, please post links here and I'll send them over.

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Another 7 bagger: 

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Bidding-Buying/Seller-won-t-send-purchase-to-mail-forwarding-address/m...

 No censorship please

Thousand of 2 and 3 baggers out there

Dont let those few 7 baggers ruin being able to follow whole posts.

[buyselljack2016]

I would be happy if the @  would stop being there, and sending notices repeatedly for everyone in the "qoute"

Didn't use to be like that.

[chrysylys]

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@hidy-hoo wrote:

chrysylys  Would it be possible for you to post a picture of the type of quote feature that you would like to see implemented here...or at least describe it?

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Not without disclosing the nature and content of the other boards.  This is the ONLY board I know of (and I post on dozens) that includes the full content of all previous quotes, no matter how long each post is as in the two examples above.  Almost all have a basic setting in the Adfmin panel to limit the number of nested quotes and Admins usually have it set to two or less.  In the examples above, you would only see the one or two most recent posts quoted, not all 7.

And again, if posters would simply use basic common sense and board etiquette by clipping out all but the sentence or two they're responding to, we wouldn't have this situation.

[chrysylys]

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@buyselljack2016 wrote:

@I would be happy if the @  would stop being there, and sending notices repeatedly for everyone in the "qoute"

Didn't use to be like that.

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@Yeah, that's becoming annoying too which is why I try to clip the @ thing out .

[alan@ebay]

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@buyselljack2016 wrote:

@I would be happy if the @  would stop being there, and sending notices repeatedly for everyone in the "qoute"

Didn't use to be like that.

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This is a known bug with the Lithium platform that they're working to fix. Should be resolved in the coming weeks. 

Thanks. 

[buyselljack2016]

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@chrysylys wrote:

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@buyselljack2016 wrote:

@I would be happy if the @  would stop being there, and sending notices repeatedly for everyone in the "qoute"

Didn't use to be like that.

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@Yeah, that's becoming annoying too which is why I try to clip the @ thing out .

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I thought they had this fixed.  It was happening not that long ago, and seemed to have stopped only to reappear.

I don't mention myself, but it says I do

@I don't need my email inbox full of messages.  I do not want to disable the boards from sending me an email, as under some instances I still want them, but not from every thread with an  @  in a post

I suppose there could be worse things