Usability issues with quoting?

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?

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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:

image

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There is also a button to quote the whole post.

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

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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.

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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:

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 :speech_balloon: or a :information_source:?

Anyway, it might be worth a try…

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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.

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