ONE thing you should get info on is those boards that are heavily into THREADED mode...

it's a different beast.. one that i never liked, but was forced to deal with

I usually click on the quote button and cut out what I don't want.

On the subject of reply buttons and streamlining, what's the benefit of the New Reply button at the top of threads and the New Reply item in the Topic Options menu? Both duplicate the function of the Reply button on the first post AFAICT, and I've never understood why they're there.

My take on this, after some recent discussion about it on one of my forums.

Skip reply box at the bottom, which makes people answering the wrong post.

Instead, do an inline popup, or slide out the reply box below the post you're answering to.

By default don't show any extra options, except the editor stuff. Should be configurable by user, at my site this is just saved in a cookie in the same way categories are hidden on the forum list.

Quoting is done by a separate button, which quotes the entire post, or just the marked parts. Quote button can of course be clicked on any number of times.

The full reply screen could still be an option, though it would be exactly the same just on its own page.

An extra editor button to clear the textarea would be a nice help too, especially if quoting the entire post would be the default.

Also, by default, no nested quotes, just the new text written by the poster. Maybe even remove the option to quote the entire post altogether, at least automatically, since it would be completely unnecessary.


On a related note, regarding previews. In "hover" previews, quotes should be removed, it's the new reply that's interesting. It should also not be showing immediately but instead after a delay and not on the entire row, just on some icon. It should also be available on threads when hovering over the "[Re: Rick]" link to the previous post. Previews should also be available on the Watched lists.

We've decided on a method of this that seems to be the standard way most forums approach this. This is something we're doing in several areas, since a user shouldn't go into complete shock when adjusting from one brand of software to another.

The quote button will be changed to Multi-Quote. So, you'll be able to select multiple posts to quote. When clicking reply it's going to take you to the full reply screen, adding in any quotes that you've tagged.

Quick Reply is going to be just what the name replies. It's going to reply to the first post in the topic.

While your changing how replies work, I have a small feature suggestion.

If a post being replied to is changed while someone is writing a reply, they should be notified. Possibly just match the changed date or an md5 checksum on the post when posting. If it doesn't match, just show the reply screen again, with the updated post and a nice big warning box mentioning the fact that the original post has been changed.

Even better would be to have a colored diff showing the changes, but that might be overkill.

This could of course be polled via ajax, to update the original post inline without having to wait for the submit.