Quoting vs. Direct Replying: What is proper etiquette?

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:

  1. Is this behavior acceptable? (posting multiple direct replies in a row)

  2. Is there a better way this scenario could be handled?

Do you know that we already show these users a popup to explain them how to quote reply?

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.

1 Like

And what if you’d combine those posts? I’m thinking about the way Slack shows the user avatar only once when multiple lines are submitted.

1 Like

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.

1 Like

Ok, I can imagine that. One other option: if someone replies a second time, the reply button becomes an edit button, in stead of creating a new post.

1 Like