Daniel Johnson wrote:The clicking the quote button was an important part of my plan in bringing in people to the challenge who are nervous and uncomfortable with forum methodology. Many have written me about not participating for that reason. There are a lot of them. I solved that with using the quote button.
I do not want to add any new thing during this challenge. I want to make an easy transition for those who are first timers.
I respect your good intentions, Daniel, but in trying to make things easier for your friends, you've taught them bad habits.
It's common internet etiquette to 'snip' irrelevant text so that people don't have to wade through it. Please learn this practice; an admin or moderator somewhere will chastise you if you don't.
Do be sure to leave in enough relevant text so that readers aren't having to ask you what you were talking about. You'll get chastised for that, too.
Odd that there's no 'help' button available on this forum and that everyone just assumes that everyone knows how to work forum controls.
Since you're worried that your friends are unfamiliar with forums, here is the FAQ for this board's software; they may want to bookmark it:
https://www.phpbb.com/community/help/fa ... 8d273b#f61Even that doesn't give instructions for handling quotes; for that, look here:
https://www.phpbb.com/community/help/bbcodePlay around with this stuff, and check the results with the 'Preview' button--it will open another frame above your text box. The Preview cannot be used to edit; just scroll back down to your text editing box for that and repeat until the preview looks the way you want it to.
You can delete material from a quote wherever you want to snip unneeded text, but be sure to use the word 'snip' on its own line, as though it's a separate paragraph.
When you're done it should look like this:
snip
Original quote Original quote Original quote Original quote Original quote Original quote
snip
Original quote Original quote Original quote
snip
If you want to comment on more than one portion of a large quote, first, copy and paste a portion and make sure it's enclosed with quote tags. Write your comment, then repeat the procedure with the next portion. You won't need to mark the snips with this approach, but be sure to copy and paste the title and author name into the 'Subject' box or the top of your post. Be sure to preview it before hitting 'Submit;' it's easy to lose track of quote tags.
That method will result in this:
Original quote Original quote Original quote
Reader's review comments
Original quote Original quote Original quote
Reader's review comments
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Hope this helps.