247127 - Change "reply" to "quote" so users don't continuously quote themselves

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

Description

[timeless]

bug 247108 says it all.

Comment 1

[timeless]

Created attachment 150956 [details] [diff] [review]
reply=>quote

Comment 2

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

It's obvious that comments get quoted when you click their "reply" buttons, so
that's not why the problem occurred.  The user in question just needs to be
(gently) educated about when to use "reply" and what to do with unwanted quotation.

Comment 3

[timeless]

user education doesn't work. <period>

there are an infinite number of users and we have no plans to educate them
before giving them keys.

reply in mail doesn't mean quote, it means reply. the user is treating it
perfectly logically. if you want to change it to reply with quote then fine, but 
'reply' has a meaning and you're misappropriating it.

Comment 4

[Dave Miller [:justdave] ([e-mail])]

a) there are no reviewed patches here yet.
b) you have active dissent (in the form of a WONTFIX) from someone with approval
authority (comment 2).
c) to get around b) without convincing Myk, you'll need to convince me, and I'm
not convinced.

You can request approval again when the above is dealt with.

Comment 5

[Vlad Dascalu]

Comment on attachment 150956 [details] [diff] [review]
reply=>quote

If someone gets around changing "reply" to "quote", probably this should be
modified as well:

    replytext = "(In reply to comment #" + id + ")\n" + replytext + "\n";

Otherwise, if it's suitable to quote something as a reply to yourself, probably
replying to yourself is ok as well. :-)

Comment 6

[Vlad Dascalu]

To be more clear, I think that we should be uniform regarding our notation. If
we use "quote" in that link, we should use something similar in that textarea as
well. Practically every time, comment #1 is in reply to comment #0, but we don't
say: "In reply" and we quote the whole comment #0 again. If you want to be
strict regarding the "reply" -> "quote" thing, the text "In reply to" should be
modified as well. Because every comment (except item 0) is a reply to the
previously comments; "In reply to" actually means that something was quoted and
we want to repost that for the sake of the readers or something like that.

Comment 7

[timeless]

wrt comment #5, how about: (Quoting comment #nnn)

wrt user education (comment #2, comment #3), quoting should probably pop up some
sort of message (inline, not necessarily a prompt()) which:

1. reminds users that the entire comment is already visible
2. requests users cut portions to which they are not adding additional content
3. do inline annotations to make use of the fact that they are quoting
 with an explanation that the full comment they are quoting is more easily
readable in its entirety in the same web page not to far from where their
comment will be, and reachable simply by writing "comment #n".

Comment 8

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

The way it works now is good enough, and the alternatives insufficiently
superior, that it isn't worth spending the time to change it.

Comment 9

[Gervase Markham [:gerv] (not reading bugmail)]

Agreed.

Gerv

Comment 10

[Prognathous]

(In reply to Myk Melez, comment #8)
> The way it works now is good enough, and the alternatives insufficiently
> superior, that it isn't worth spending the time to change it.

I humbly disagree. (1) You don't have to invest much time to change it, as
timeless has proved willing to do it -and- (2) it *is* a more accurate and
clearer notation. The way I see, it's a minor change that only improves
Bugzilla, no downsides.

Prog.