The discussion revolves around proper etiquette in Discourse regarding quoting versus direct replying. AdamCapriola observes that new users often reply directly to multiple posts instead of quoting them, resulting in a series of consecutive replies. He finds this behavior unmannered and notes that the highlight-and-quote feature is not intuitive. zogstrip mentions that a popup guides users to quote instead of replying, but AdamCapriola reports that many users ignore it. codinghorror suggests a site setting to prevent sequential replies, though it’s not enabled by default. Sander78 proposes combining posts, but codinghorror counters that this complicates content with quotes, oneboxes, and reply targets. Sander78 then suggests a second reply could trigger a quote button, though the idea is not fully developed.
Something I’ve noticed happen with regularity on my Discourse install is that newer users tend to click the reply button for each individual post they want to respond to, rather than highlight and quote multiple posts at once. (The highlight + quote feature is less obvious.) The result is two or more posts in a row by the same user.
I originally considered this to be unmannered (posting multiple times in a row is typically frowned upon), but I starting thinking about it more and maybe it’s not a bad thing? The user is at least trying to maintain direction in the conversation.
I’m interested in hearing people’s thoughts on:
Is this behavior acceptable? (posting multiple direct replies in a row)
Is there a better way this scenario could be handled?
I’m aware of the popup, but I’ve had so many users ignore it. It’s become a trend to see users string together direct replies until I personally message them and ask they quote instead. They don’t think they’re doing anything wrong per se, and I’m not sure I feel what they are doing is that out of line either. It’s a muddled situation to me.
The only thing I can think of is another site setting that forces users not to post (n) replies in sequence. This has been requested before, and as long as it is off by default or set very high I don’t think it’s a problem to do.. this feature also exists in other forum software, I know that for a fact.
In fact @zogstrip why don’t you add this to your list, very low pri.
No, this was suggested elsewhere, it’s fine for a simple one-liner chat system, but when you are combining posts with quotes, oneboxes, paragraphs, reply targets, username mentions.. it becomes extremely complicated to merge them.