POLL: Should the "Quote" option be used instead of @member?

[rabler]

Hah, I learned something here. If you click the person's name in a quote, it will take you to that individual post.
Useful if the quote is a very short piece and you want to jump back and read the whole post. Or just find the context of the comment.

the Quote to leave an easy backtrack

The backwards link doesn't work until you actually post your reply.

 

[RJSakowski]

I use the @Member when I want an individual who is not participating in the discussion at hand to be aware that I have mentioned them. For example, of someone is looking for some help on a particular issue and another member has discussed a similar issue in a past thread, I would connect the two via the @Member.

When a member is participating in the current thread, and I am replying to a post he/she has made, I use the reply function. If I am posting a response to multiple posts, I use the quote function.

 

[Aaron_W]

@wachuko pretty much summed up my feelings on it.

If clutter of the quote is of concern trim the quoted post to the specific point. This not only leaves bread crumbs for others to track back, but also can help to focus the reply. Sometimes when people leave a long quoted post in its entirety it can be hard to figure out exactly what piece of the quoted post is being addressed. In a photo heavy quoted post I will often trim the extraneous photos out.

My preference is to use quote when referring to a post where my reply may be unclear without a quote. Like I would rarely quote the original post in a thread as most will assume that is what most are referring to. Similarly I may not quote a recent post where my post will be directly below or at most just a few below if other reply before I complete my post.

Your example of the Project of the day or what did you buy today posts, personally I'd quote but I wouldn't feel it was out of line to use the @ function to draw the posters attention asking a specific question like

Hey @extropic where did you buy that wingyding? or @extropic B i t c h i n Camaro!

Apparently we have a sensitive net nanny.

 

[Boswell]

I almost Never quote and entire post. I often quote a few words or a sentence to give context to my comment. I find that I rarely have the need to use the @username reference but could see that I might be handy from time to time. Regardless, I see many people using these features in multiple ways and none of these bother me. If I were to be bothered by any of it it, it would be when someone replies to a POTD type thread with a comment and no way for me to know what the comment is in reference to. Still that is a minor issue and I don't loose any sleep over it. There is strength in our group here through diversification and variety.

 

[higgite]

For myself, unless I thought there was some reason to capture a copy of the referent post, I have used the @ for a couple of reasons. 1) it's easy 2) It saves page space (and bytes) by not reproducing the previous/referenced post.

Re #2, I figure if page space (and bytes) were a problem, the quote/reply option wouldn't be offered. I use it for context when responding to a post. I sometimes delete portions to kind of zero in on the specific thing I'm responding to, as I did in this post. ymmv

Tom

Edit to add: I personally find "@Member" annoying when the thread is 3 pages long and "member" has posted 4 or 5 times, so you don't know which post the responder is responding to. Again, ymmv.

 

[Flyinfool]

I guess I am similar to most. If I am replying to something specific that is mostly meant for the person I am replying to I will just use the @. I will also use the @ to call a member into the discussion. If I am replying to a post with general info or answering a question that is of general interest to all then I will use the quote and/or multi quote. I almost always trim the quote to the relevent parts and always delete pictures. I internet is not super fast and I hate waiting for the same pic to load a half dozen times because everyone was quoting the whole post. If you really want to see the pic you can then click back to see the full post. There are some other forums I belong to sim,ilar to this one where the membership is more like a happy family, That forum is set up to automatically strip all pics and attachments from all quotes. This saves a lot of bandwidth.