# Cross-Discourse Quoting
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-quoting/106951
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [January 19, 2019, 12:01am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-quoting/106951 "2019-01-19T00:01:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@FoohonPie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/FoohonPie)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2019, 12:01am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-quoting/106951/1 "2019-01-19T00:01:54Z")
It would be useful if I could quote posts from external discourse instances. Something like
> [quote=“member, post:3, topic:275, source:meta.discourse.org”]
Where _source:meta.discourse.org_ would provide a similar level of context as internal quotes.
My primary use case is that I’m currently training my Staff to rely on flags instead of manual moderation, and wanted to show them this:
> [@Understanding post flags in Discourse](https://meta.discourse.org/t/understanding-post-flags-in-discourse/275/1):
>
> If the **same post is hidden by a second round of flags** , the flags must now be manually handled by a moderator. The user is not given an opportunity to edit the post, as they already had that opportunity, and the community still sees an issue.
I copied/quoted that from the topic here on meta, and pasted it into my forum, not really thinking about what I was doing. It of course linked to a topic on my forum with the same id, which makes perfect sense, but isn’t what I want.
I _could_ link to the post directly, which works nicely with the onebox, but I really just want to call out the relevant piece.
Aside from staff-training, I also run a few different sites that could benefit from occasionally sharing parts of conversations between them. As an added bonus, this would show users that there’s a larger Discourse world out there by bridging conversations between communities.
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2019, 1:54am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-quoting/106951/2 "2019-01-19T01:54:57Z")
> [@FoohonPie](#):
>
> quote posts from external discourse instances. Something like
errr isn’t this called “oneboxing an external URL”? I mean, it already works..
> **[How to stop using TLS-SNI-01 with Certbot](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/how-to-stop-using-tls-sni-01-with-certbot/83210)**
>
> Let's Encrypt is removing support for domain validation with TLS-SNI-01. If you're using Certbot and received an email titled "Action required: Let’s Encrypt certificate renewals" or are getting the error message: Client with the currently...
`https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/how-to-stop-using-tls-sni-01-with-certbot/83210`
---
### Author:  [@FoohonPie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/FoohonPie)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2019, 2:16am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-quoting/106951/3 "2019-01-19T02:16:59Z")
Yes that works, but that’s not what I’m describing. That’s a link to the _entire_ post, I’m wondering about the possibility of linking to a quote:
> [@FoohonPie](#):
>
> I _could_ link to the post directly, which works nicely with the onebox, but I really just want to call out the relevant piece.
The idea is to load a quote like the one above, so that readers can see a specific part of an external post instead of a link to the full thing, but also with a link back to the source.
It would be quicker than onebox to get specific info to readers, while still letting them get all the context if they want it.
* * *
edit: update with example from the link you posted
> If you’ve configured Certbot to use a directory other than /etc/letsencrypt, you should use that directory in the commands instead.
The reference post in its entirety would be too much info if I just wanted to quote the piece above, and would cause more friction for the user than is ideal. Focusing on the quote instead is more useful, but now it is somewhat orphaned. Quoting parts of posts between instances would be the best of both features.
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2019, 6:56am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-quoting/106951/4 "2019-01-19T06:56:06Z")
Right but in that case I’d just quote the remote site and provide the URL at the top.. like so?
* * *
As it says in [https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/how-to-stop-using-tls-sni-01-with-certbot/83210](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/how-to-stop-using-tls-sni-01-with-certbot/83210)
> All most users need to do is make sure your Certbot installation is up-to-date and test and configure automatic renewal for the updated version of Certbot. You can find instructions for how to do this at [https://certbot.eff.org](https://certbot.eff.org/). You need Certbot version 0.28.0 or newer. You can check which version you have installed by running Certbot with the --version flag.
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### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2019, 7:08am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-quoting/106951/5 "2019-01-19T07:08:22Z")
> [@FoohonPie](#):
>
> Yes that works, but that’s not what I’m describing. That’s a link to the _entire_ post, I’m wondering about the possibility of linking to a quote:
The reason oneboxing exists is you can’t assume what other servers are running in terms of version or platform. Not to mention that just because a site is running a particular platform today, that the same will be true tomorrow.
Create a dependency on Discourse now and if anyone ever does move away any platform-specific embedding would break. It’s one of the reasons oneboxing is so damn useful.
---
### Author:  [@FoohonPie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/FoohonPie)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2019, 8:20am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-quoting/106951/6 "2019-01-19T08:20:01Z")
@codinghorror that does work yeah, but it doesn’t have the same slickness as the regular copy/quote feature. Regardless, this isn’t a common enough of a case to be bothersome, but it does have me curious about what is possible. 🤔
@Stephen I hear ya, that does make sense. Though, would it not be within Discourse’s control to send information about itself to another Discourse instance if it recognized the request? There’s no assumption if a response says: “Hey, I’m a Discourse site too! Here’s the author name and post url to render alongside that quote you requested.”.
That’s a good point though about platform-specific embeds and migration issues. 😬
Perhaps I’m envisioning something too grand here, but a Discourse instance recognizing its siblings across the web seems so cool as a concept, as does users being able to directly quote/converse with each other across communities.
Maybe one day!
---
### Author:  [@hellekin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hellekin)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 3:58pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-quoting/106951/7 "2025-09-05T15:58:17Z")
## Discourse Transclusion (quoting from other Discourse instances)
A decade ago there was [a similar discussion](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-there-a-way-to-quote-something-that-was-said-on-a-different-discourse-instance/18815), but it didn’t go anywhere. Now, we have a bit more experience and tools…
> [@On another topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/379126/7):
>
> I wish we had the same capacity as quoting, to back-reference the original post, e.g., with _added source_:
>
> ```plaintext
> [quote="tobiaseigen, source:https://meta.discourse.org, post:6, topic:379126"]
> Can you expand on what you mean by this?
> [/quote]
>
> ```
>
> This would be useful once we have a `discourse-hub`-like client-side application that can either log in into several Discourse instances at once, or take advantage of ActivityPub. If I had such a client, e.g., as a Web Extension in Firefox, then I could quote from a related forum, enabling readers to click and go there in context. And get closer to [Ted Nelson’s concept](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transclusion).
Imagine you are the Discourse Team, and you’re using one public, and one private Discourse instances. Usually you would copy a quote from the public one into the private one, but then, you would lose context: instead of being able to expand the quote, or to click-and-go to the original, you’d have to mention the source URL as well. Now, if your reader is authenticated, and the `source` URL is part of the quote, you can _seamlessly_ go from one instance to the next.
Perfect for [Discourse-connect](https://meta.discourse.org/t/setup-discourseconnect-official-single-sign-on-for-discourse-sso/13045)ed sites, and for sites using [ActivityPub Plugin](https://meta.discourse.org/t/activitypub-plugin/266794).
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### Author:  [@tobiaseigen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tobiaseigen)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 4:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-quoting/106951/8 "2025-09-05T16:02:59Z")
I like this idea alot! What you describe is exactly what we do between meta and our internal instance.
I think the obvious place to get this is the Copy quote button that pops up when you select some text in a post.
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### Author:  [@Ethsim2](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ethsim2)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 6:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-quoting/106951/9 "2025-09-05T18:55:18Z")
i would advocate for a site setting that toggles between passing the domain or not in the copied quote. I have a use case in education where i wouldn’t want the copied paste to reveal the domain it came from🙂
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### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 6:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-quoting/106951/10 "2025-09-05T18:55:55Z")
> [@hellekin](#):
>
> A decade ago there was [a similar discussion](https://meta.discourse.org/t/is-there-a-way-to-quote-something-that-was-said-on-a-different-discourse-instance/18815)
There was also [Include the forum's URL in quotes](https://meta.discourse.org/t/include-the-forums-url-in-quotes/263493) in 2023, and I was not aware of the two other topics when I posted this feature request 😛
I wouldn’t be surprised if the subject had come up in other topics.
---
### Author:  [@renato](https://meta.discourse.org/u/renato)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2025, 2:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-quoting/106951/11 "2025-09-29T14:54:19Z")
> [@Ethsim2](#):
>
> I have a use case in education where i wouldn’t want the copied paste to reveal the domain it came from🙂
Can you expand on this?
If we added the domain when copied through Copy quote, I think we could conveniently strip it when pasted on the composer on the same site, so the perceived experience would be the same in this case. It would not be stripped on another instance or if pasted anywhere else.
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### Author:  [@Ethsim2](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ethsim2)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2025, 4:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-quoting/106951/12 "2025-09-29T16:04:00Z")
> [@renato](#):
>
> > [@Ethsim2](#):
> >
> > I have a use case in education where i wouldn’t want the copied paste to reveal the domain it came from🙂
>
> Can you expand on this?
My case is more practical: when I use Copy quote it preserves the raw LaTeX source code, which is what I need when re-using maths elsewhere. If I just highlight and copy, I usually only get the rendered MathJax, not the source. The issue is that Copy quote also appends the attribution line with the domain, which I don’t want. So the need here is: keep the LaTeX-preserving behavior, but without the automatic link being added.
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### Author:  [@Ethsim2](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ethsim2)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2026, 8:37pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-quoting/106951/13 "2026-01-12T20:37:08Z")
One important requirement for me is that any future “source-aware” quoting must be optional.
Ideally this would be a user preference or site setting that toggles whether Copy quote includes a source/domain. The current minimal quote format should remain the default or at least be preservable, as it’s relied on for reuse (e.g. raw LaTeX extraction in education).