The global removal of quotes is a nice feature but it penalizes users who, for reasons of visual disability, quote entire single line posts to ensure that the quote/response can readily be seen on a single screen with very large text. I am such a user, and although I appreciate the general user experience with this setting, I would really like a user preference to disable the intrusive system edits for my own posts. I quote semantically and tersely, certainly not verbosely. And now Discourse if forcing me to do the silliness of quote all but the last character so I can create a response in a way that suits what I need.
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Can you show some screenshot? We only remove the quote when it’s just above and would thus duplicate content on the screen.
Real estate is really tight for those with poor vision. The vertical space between successive posts exceeds the space to a quoted line. I cannot use my laptop screen. This is a full screen desktop monitor.
Trying to understand. If you reduce the composer a tiny bit, you should be able to read my (short) post (in the green rectangle), right? Why do you need to quote it?
Also, have you tried hiding the preview (in the bottom right corner) so you get more space to write your replies?
In fact I have to continuously re-size the composer depending on task. Sometimes I want to look at more of what is posted. Sometimes I want to look at what the reader will see. In general this is conceptually quite taxing. And sometimes I am answering someone who has quoted me and I need to see both my original quote and the answer to which I am answering. In the latter case, my brain simply collapses in despair.
To address this issue, I have started copying all but the last character of a full quote. This allows me to bypass the dictatorial system edit. But it also is a PIA to carefully select all but the last character. Therefore, i simply need a personal preference to override the system edit. I can understand that might not be the highest priority for Discourse, but it would certainly make my life easier to re-enable former functionality, which allowed me to post as I wish.
You can alternatively quote the whole post and remove any character in the quote. It doesn’t have to be the last one.
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Yes. I do have that laborious workaround. The proposed user preference would simply be a kindness for those requiring visual assistance having difficulty as it is working with sighted people. It takes a lot of work for me to go back and quote the text I want to refer to. Therefore it is disheartening when Discourse destroys that work.
I’m confused. Are you quoting it so you can see what you’re responding to while you compose your reply?
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out of kindness for other users with visual disabilities, i generally quote a lot to frame my answers. this is kind to them because they won’t have to scroll as much. I also do this for myself when viewing their replies, because the “quote/response” pair is a powerful contextual unit. Dissociated posts are much harder to grasp.
Ok, so System removing the quotes isn’t the problem specifically then? More that users who have some form of visual impairment and run at a high zoom see much less of the screen at any given time.
If system edits were overridden for individuals, then all users would see the duplicate quotes.
It sounds to me as if you’re asking for adjacent quotes to be included, but rolled-up as standard, with a user preference to show them as expanded by default for the visually impaired?
Alternatively, a standard theme for the visually impaired which removes some of the whitespace between posts within a topic would allow the post above to remain visible on the screen?
We have to look at solutions here which enhance UX for everyone, I think either of the options above would achieve what you’re looking for, no?
Yes. This would be fine. For example, I see both your original post and my quote of your entire previous post. This actually helps me because I can see what you said and what I said on one screen. On our own Discourse site, we usually have freewheeling conversations with multiple posters. Having a quote to refer to is a blessing for us.
That would work, but I thought it might be simpler to implement as a single flag in user preferences to not remove whole quotes. Then the algorithm that automatically removes such quotes would just have to honor that users preferences. It’s like one if statement.
What you’re proposing is also nice because it would only affect assisted users, and would not bother sighted users with the quoted detail (which they could presumably examine if they wished). This would perhaps be more work to implement than simply not-deleting.
Ah this is tricky, because the largest gap is for the lovely controls on each post. Addressing that would involve some very deep ux discussions. Therefore, I’d hesitate to pursue the whitespace removal since it would only be a partial solution.
But then other users would see inconsistent behavior between directly quoted posts and become confused. We already field queries on the topic here quite regularly.
To be clear this setting isn’t mandatory, if you frequent a particular site and want to ask the administrators to disable it via the admin settings then it’s called remove full quote.
I think the big point here is that as we’re separated by a browser window, changes should be possible which satisfy both sides, manipulating the data into the most useful format for all parties. I’m not convinced your request satisfies that.
I work with a lot of clients for whom compliance with DDA / ADA is imperative and haven’t had this specific complaint arise as yet, but but have fielded requests previously for a theme that’s better tailored for the visually impaired. I’m curious as to what the team think on this one, there’s definitely merit in doing something, but I’m not sure that that something is a per-user setting and conditional which muddies the water on posting behavior.
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Agreed. The proliferation of settings is a ux nightmare.
I also just noticed that quotes are expandable. A simple solution might be to:
- not remove the full quote (it’s too draconian)
- make full quotes collapsed to a small icon.
This small icon would expand to the full quote and permit rapid and easy referral to a prior and even immediately preceding quote for those of us who need context on demand. I.e., include the full quotes, just collapse them to not bother others. Partial quotes are already wonderfully collapsed. Just extend that feature to a full quote, perhaps with ellipses:
… v
Sure, that’s what I meant by:
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OK. I guess my only contribution here was to point out that with the collapsed included full quote, I would not need a user preference because I could just click as needed. I would be quite grateful for this. 
This makes no sense to me. Can you find any credible supporting citations for this behavior?
I would think that presenting just the relevant text is better than presenting additional duplicated text that competes for the eyes’ attention.
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And that would be even more true if the user has to suffer though all of the duplicated text with a screen reader.
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Is it possible to disable this? I’d like ppl to be able to quote what they are responding to no matter if it is the above post or not. It’s more consistent if one can always quote what one is responding to and sometimes becomes confusing when one is not able to post a quote.
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