# Using a \> quote gets around minimum message size
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-a-quote-gets-around-minimum-message-size/132998
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [November 9, 2019, 4:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-a-quote-gets-around-minimum-message-size/132998 "2019-11-09T16:13:50Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Cardinalflyer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Cardinalflyer)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2019, 4:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-a-quote-gets-around-minimum-message-size/132998/1 "2019-11-09T16:13:50Z")
A user recently responded to a post by quoting part of the question behind a \>, rather than using the Quote function, then answered simply ‘yes’.
I tried to edit the message to insert the [quote] structure… but then the message was too short.
Perhaps there’s no way to easily discount text behind a \> when determining post length, but it was a surprise that this approach enabled a ‘yes’ response.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2019, 8:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-a-quote-gets-around-minimum-message-size/132998/2 "2019-11-09T20:52:48Z")
There are lots of ways to subvert this including zero space Unicode chars etc. Fighting that battle is a losing proposition. So we do the basic checks and if the user wants to be clever (over and over) and cheat it is a staff job to ask them to stop and institute penalties if they do not.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2019, 8:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-a-quote-gets-around-minimum-message-size/132998/3 "2019-11-09T20:53:11Z")