Usability issues with quoting?

[looksintolasers]

Is anybody experiencing user issues with the select-to-quote interface on discourse?

Is there more of a learning curve compared to the quote-reply buttons on more traditional forums?

[nathank (Nathan Kershaw)]

@looksintolasers

Is anybody experiencing user issues with the select-to-quote interface on discourse?

It is working just fine for me - just highlight the text you want to quote and watch the magic. To my thought this is much better than any other forum software I’ve used!

Although I do note that here on meta.discourse.org they are trialling a fancy new ‘send quotes by Twitter or email’ thing:

[Moin]

There is also a button to quote the whole post.

[JammyDodger]

If the floating ‘Quote’ option isn’t appearing, there’s a setting you could check on your Preferences/Interface page:

[looksintolasers]

Thanks for the replies. I like this feature a lot, it’s logical and discourages quote bloat.

My only real concern is that users might not actually discover it unless they try to highlight text.

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

People don’t read manuals and walls of texts, and even sometimes even a single paragraph of explanations.

What I do on one of my forums is sometimes publish a topic that consists of a simple reminder that a feature exists and invite people to use it. I tend to make it the shortest and clearest as possible.

Examples:

Reminder : you can change the home page in your preferences

Reminder : you can set your location to be added to an interactive...

I think the most important is the topic’s title because most people won’t even read the topic.

So you could try something like that, with a topic’s title kind of like

Reminder: you can quote someone simply by selecting a part of their message and click on the “quote” pop-up.

And paste a screenshot of the feature in the post’s content.

(I’m not a native English speaker, so the title could certainly be improved).

Also, I sometimes add an emoji in the title (at the beginning or the end) to draw attention. In your case, maybe a or a ?

Anyway, it might be worth a try…

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

Precisly (did I spell it right, it looks funny…). My users are really conservative — read: used to use only FB and Instagram — and I have to give that tip once a month. When they realize that option they almost love it because it is so easy (and logical).

But it is something that an average new user can’t find easily, because — as said — they don’t read docs.