A Few Simple Posting Rules unofficial of coarse

[moldboy 0]

1) There's nothing I hate more then a person who replies to an incredibly long post by first quoting that message in there post. It gets even worse when they are the only people who has responded. I mean general rule of thumb when your post is the only post you don't need to quote the entire post from just above, we know what you are talking about because, I just finished reading it.2) Or, how about the threads that have 5+ replies and we will say that the original question is where can I download a free and legal version of word, and the first reply is, "you can't, word isn't free" the second is "Well you could try open office it has much of the same functionaly of word" The third being, well you can download the word viewer which will let you read and print, or you can download a trial from MS website." Those all seem like good posts, maybe a little short but otherwise informative, then a guy comes along sees a topic title like "Free MS word?" and says, okay reads the question hits the reply button and says, (after first making a lengthy quote (see above rule)) "Well you can't get a free fully functionality copy of word, however you might want to try the free trial from MS, or better yet use Open Office, it is free and works just the same" Now can someone please tell me what the point of that post was, did it add to the conversation? NO Did it in any way make a good point? NO and it's even worse if I asked the question, and wasn't quite satisfied with the above posts then when I got the email regarding the new post I though it might be a helpful post, turns out it wasn't. I really just want to snap on those people.Well there's my vent

[atomicnacho 0]

I think that things like your #2 are a bit of a consequence of the posting points system. There are a substantial number of people here (myself included) that are trying to build up points to either get hosted or get an upgrade. These people see the first post and maybe even all the other posts and want to get thier post in to get points and ignore the fact that the question was answered already. Obviously it is not as bad a outright spamming and posting nonsense, but I agree that there are a lot of posts that add nothing.It kinda falls under the same category as the "Me too", or "Nice Find" posts. Which I'm sure if I check all of my posts I have a substantial number of. But I guess these are accounted for by the small amount of posting points that you recieve for short posts.my 2?

[midnightvamp 1]

Yes, your points are all true... It seems that if it's a forum, people will either not know enough to delete the quoted part before they submit their post or don't care. (I say this because when you press 'reply', the quoted section is automatically placed into the message part where you type.) This might confuse people at the beginning if they are not familiar with the forums (I'm sure I didn't get it at the beginning either...)About people answering questions again, that people have already answered... though most of it is people that do not want to read through all the posts previously left by other members (I'm guilty of this for discussions that are pages in length), some of it could be genuine overlap. I know that I've gone to answer a post, and for really active ones, by the time I'm finished typing, someone's already said the same thing, or they say it right after me, not realizing that it's been said because they've been typing for the past 5 - 10 minutes replying to the thread.So, yes, I do find these things annoying some time, but in other times, I like to give some slack to the people 'just incase'.

[Cool_Freaker 0]

I know excessive quoting gets annoying - but generally I haven't found it to be too much of a problem. Besides, it's easy enough to scroll past a quote as it's quite clearly marked. Personally, I quite like quotes - it makes a topic easier to follow, especially when it is 1+ pages, so I'd rather some excessive quoting rather than none at all and getting lost. Some people may just do it out of habit anyway, and are not intentionally trying to be a nuisance. I agree, it really ticks me off when people answer the question, when it's already been answered. I reckon it's worse, though, when people ask the same question that has already been asked and answered in the thread! That's just laziness when you're looking for answers. In terms of answers popping up several times, well, some people are too helpful, or maybe believe they have worded their response in a clearer more concise manner. I have done this myself, when a question has been answered, but perhaps not as clearly as I would have put it. I then posted my response, which whilst generally indicated the same instructions, would have been clearer (at least in my mind). atomicnacho has a point about Xisto having this problem in particular, and I agree, that some blame can be placed on the hosting credit system in place here.

[Saint_Michael 3]

of course the general idea is to add to the topic with something that could improve to it say like for instance software, I won't go into details about that but you get where I'm going with it. But yeah I would have to agree that alot of people just read the first post and then post a reply that 3 pages deep with the same answer. I'm guilty of that of course so are other members. But usually i skim the posts to see if anything has been actually answered and then ask myself could I add something to it that someone else missed?

But on the excessive quoting though yeah that does get annoying have to keep on scrolling to get to the end cause of a long post. I think the best way do do a long post is this:

400 words laters....

Put a few periods to say the the quote is running on but your stopping it there, thats like a cardinal rule in all forms of writing especially when your quoting someone. Cause if you post/write the entire pass that your quote from your getting youself knee deep in plahgerizing (i think i spelled that wrong).

[moldboy 0]

. Personally, I quite like quotes - it makes a topic easier to follow, especially when it is 1+ pages,

It's not that I don't like quotes, as you can see It turly does make the thread easier to read, but when people quote the entire thing, I find it even more annoying when a mod has edited the post, and the quote includes the mods yello sticky

[BordaForx 0]

I think quotes are great. Heh.

[grnjd 0]

Some time quotes are good and its useful, like if you want to respond to someone but the thread is 100 pages how would that person know that you are talking to him? that when the quote button comes into play, you quote them and they will know that you are talking to them rather then someone else. Its useful at times, but it can also be abused.

[Avalon 1]

It appears people seem to think quoting another person's post adds to their post and increases their credit more. Correct me if I'm worng, but I don't think quoted text is used in the calculation of hosting credits for a given post. Can someone confirm this? I think this is similar for code blocks and the like. I believe this to be one of the reasons mods are strict on using "quote boxes" when you are quoting from another source, be that another post or text from a web site.

[shigajet 0]

I doubt if including quotes increases the number of credits for a post. Besides, I rarely use the quote feature - if at all - unless I came across something that caught my attention and provokes me to make a comment on it.