# Oneboxes don't work inside quote blocks?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [April 17, 2018, 8:50am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508 "2018-04-17T08:50:12Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@RobMeade](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RobMeade)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 8:50am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508/1 "2018-04-17T08:50:12Z")
Hi all,
Some time ago I wrote a few _How Tos_ for some of our users. One of them in particular explained how to embed a Sketchfab 3D model within a post.
I gave them an example topic with the text blockquoted so that it looked more like a “topic”, this just showed the URL, I escaped it with a backslash, then beneath I did the same but had the Sketchfab link un-escaped so that the model appeared within the blockquote area.
I stumbled across this topic today and spotted that escaping the forward slashes in the URL or replacing them with HTML entities no longer made the link just appear as text e.g. without it automatically become a hyperlink, but also that the embedded Sketchfab 3D content no longer appeared.
The only way I have been able to get around this is to not blockquote that bit of content, which looks a bit rubbish.
Because I don’t tend to read my own _How Tos_ that often I hadn’t noticed this change previously, as such it may have been like it for sometime.
Any thoughts? Is there any reason why Onebox’d content cannot appear in a blockquote?
The following was going to be an example, but it’s behaving differently here to our own hosted version;
> Here’s something pretty to see;
>
> [Desert Bridge - 3D model by McFuzz [d75d53b] - Sketchfab](https://sketchfab.com/models/d75d53ba75ad44f6ad58952d8d9d256a)
In the above, it looks like some part of the Onebox’ing has worked, it has the title of the model, but on our hosted version, only the link is appearing.
> Here’s something pretty to see;
[https://sketchfab.com/models/d75d53ba75ad44f6ad58952d8d9d256a](https://sketchfab.com/models/d75d53ba75ad44f6ad58952d8d9d256a)
…and in the above, I can’t have the model in the blockquote.
---
### Author:  [@bartv](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bartv)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 8:55am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508/2 "2018-04-17T08:55:13Z")
Hey Rob, I work for Sketchfab (lowercase f ;-). This sounds more like a Discourse issue, but if there’s anything we can do to help, let me know!
---
### Author:  [@RobMeade](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RobMeade)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 8:57am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508/3 "2018-04-17T08:57:35Z")
Hi Bart,
Thank you, appreciated. It did used to work as I had wanted so I can only assume it has been via a change in Discourse at some point, there is probably a good reason behind it, but just in case there isn’t I thought I’d ask in the hope that I can revert to what I had 🙂
My apologies regarding the “F”, I will correct on our site also!
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 9:08pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508/4 "2018-04-17T21:08:26Z")
Any ideas here @jomaxro?
---
### Author:  [@jomaxro](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jomaxro)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 9:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508/5 "2018-04-17T21:29:38Z")
We have the same issue with any onebox _in a quote_.
> Adding an internal Discourse link gives us the “inline” onebox:
> [Oneboxes don't work inside quote blocks?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-no-longer-embed-sketchfab-content-in-a-blockquote/85508)
> Twitter (or any other link) also doesn’t expand, we get “inline” too.
> [https://twitter.com/discourse/status/983464342799593478](https://twitter.com/discourse/status/983464342799593478)
It’s possible this broke as soon back when we added inline oneboxing, or a more recent regression, can’t say. Personally I’d call this a bug.
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 9:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508/6 "2018-04-17T21:49:36Z")
Hmm so _all_ oneboxing is broken??
>
No, I don’t think so. I am unclear what you are saying Josh?
---
### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 9:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508/7 "2018-04-17T21:53:05Z")
The issue arises when a link is **inside** a quote.
When the link is on its own, it gets oneboxed. When it’s inside a quote, it gets “_inlined_”.
```
https://twitter.com/triketora/status/986356346672082944
vs
> https://twitter.com/triketora/status/986356346672082944
```
>
vs
> [https://twitter.com/triketora/status/986356346672082944](https://twitter.com/triketora/status/986356346672082944)
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 9:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508/8 "2018-04-17T21:54:50Z")
Right, oneboxing within a blockquote was never supported and isn’t supposed to work.
---
### Author:  [@jomaxro](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jomaxro)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 10:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508/9 "2018-04-17T22:12:10Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> I am unclear what you are saying Josh?
Left out “in a quote”, fixed that. Thanks @zogstrip for clarifying.
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2018, 11:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508/10 "2018-04-17T23:52:06Z")
> If you absolutely positively need to, this workaround can work, no guarantees it will work forever though.
>
> >
```plaintext
If you absolutely positively need to, this workaround can work, no guarantees it will work forever though.
https://twitter.com/triketora/status/986356346672082944
```
---
### Author:  [@RobMeade](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RobMeade)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2018, 11:38am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508/11 "2018-04-19T11:38:39Z")
Thanks everyone for looking at this and discussing it, truly appreciated.
It’s a shame it isn’t an intentional feature, as it has been very useful, not something worthy of consideration as a _feature_ rather than a bug @codinghorror?
Thanks for the headsup about using the HTML markup @sam, I will give that a go for now and appreciate the warning that it may stop in the future.
Thanks again everyone, appreciate the support 🙂
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2018, 1:10pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508/12 "2018-04-19T13:10:36Z")
If the site had already been oneboxed in a topic it seems noisy to have a huge onebox every time the link is mentioned again. Having it show as a link rather than a onebox in a quote seems preferable.
---
### Author:  [@RobMeade](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RobMeade)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2018, 3:26pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508/13 "2018-04-20T15:26:57Z")
That is a very good point, I was obviously only thinking of the specific usage/need I had, which was to be able to display a before/after view of a users post.
I suspect it would be of little use to anyone else, so perhaps requesting its behaviour could be configurable, at a post level, wouldnt really be worth it.
I guess a better approach for myself would be to create a couple of screenshots instead and edit those where necessary.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [September 6, 2020, 6:00am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508/14 "2020-09-06T06:00:35Z")
---
### Author:  [@riking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/riking)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2020, 1:59am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/oneboxes-dont-work-inside-quote-blocks/85508/15 "2020-09-09T01:59:05Z")