Should quoted posts be references or a verbatim copy?
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NodeBB (@[email protected])
#UX question for the #mastodon hivemind. When using a #forum, and you quote a post, do you expect to be able to edit the post (i.e. to add emphasis, truncate unnecessary parts, etc.)? It's possible to structure quoted posts like "references", so a reference to a deleted post is also empty. This has advantages when it comes to the #GDPR Right to Erasure, but may be a grey area (is a quoted post still YOUR post?). The negative cost is a hit to UX.
Fosstodon (fosstodon.org)
For example, @julian is a reference. If I change my username, then this mention will change to reflect the new username.Hah, I was wrong, it's just text, too.When you quote a post, you copy the post verbatim, and it looks something like
@julian said in this thread:
However, when you quote a post, you copy the post verbatim, and it looks something like
There are some advantages — namely the ability to edit the quote to emphasize text, or truncate out parts of the quote you don't need.
The downside is that a verbatim copy means that we can't easily (or at all, currently) remove it if the source post is deleted. If a user wants to delete all traces of their presence on the forum, then the quoted post will still remain as it is not associated with their user account.
We can replace this with a reference, but we lose the flexibility described above. You wouldn't be able to edit it.
Do you consider this a problem?
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It's an annoying compromise - I personally feel like references have more issues.
I often quote in parts, and I suspect if I couldn't do so with the "native" post quote (which would be very hard to do with editable references) I'd just not use the quote feature and them manually via markdown, which would lead to exact same issues.
And ultimately, even if the quote was gone, you'd still have context of the reply.I do however think that mentions being references seems like a better UX than text vast majority of the time - you're mentioning a user, not their username, and if they change that or delete their account it makes more sense to reflect that. Also helps with removing the presence - even if the quotes remain, at least their attribution doesn't.
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@oplik0 Consensus seems to be that being able to edit a quoted post is advantageous.
Two things:
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I said above that one advantage would be better control over erasure of content should the end-user require it. However, even if we did make quoted posts references, the problem still remains because people would just manually make up their own quoted posts, thus defeating the ability to reliable erase all references to someone's post
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A quoted post without a username attribution is not in violation of GDPR, whereas if an attribution is present then an argument could be made that it should also be erased. This is difficult when the quoted post is text. However — and @phenomlab can provide additional guidance here — if a username were a reference, and the user's account was deleted, then the attribution would no longer apply, it would just show something like
@A Former User said...
, thus sidestepping the attribution problem.
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@julian said in Should quoted posts be references or a verbatim copy?:
However — and @phenomlab can provide additional guidance here — if a username were a reference, and the user's account was deleted, then the attribution would no longer apply, it would just show something like @A Former User said..., thus sidestepping the attribution problem.
This is 100% correct, providing the quote does not contain attribution outside of the @ symbol (for example, just julian instead of @julian) and even then, it's not much use because there are likely millions of "julians" in the world in the sense of a name - if you included the surname, address, etc, then yes, this is a violation of GDPR if the user asked for it to be removed.
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Not being able to edit the post would be a problem in general. especially if quoted text is long...
@julian said in Should quoted posts be references or a verbatim copy?:
NodeBB (@[email protected])
#UX question for the #mastodon hivemind. When using a #forum, and you quote a post, do you expect to be able to edit the post (i.e. to add emphasis, truncate unnecessary parts, etc.)? It's possible to structure quoted posts like "references", so a reference to a deleted post is also empty. This has advantages when it comes to the #GDPR Right to Erasure, but may be a grey area (is a quoted post still YOUR post?). The negative cost is a hit to UX.
Fosstodon (fosstodon.org)
For example, @julian is a reference. If I change my username, then this mention will change to reflect the new username.Hah, I was wrong, it's just text, too.otherwise I would not able to separate your text to reply more efficiently.
When you quote a post, you copy the post verbatim, and it looks something like
@julian said in this thread:
However, when you quote a post, you copy the post verbatim, and it looks something like
There are some advantages — namely the ability to edit the quote to emphasize text, or truncate out parts of the quote you don't need.
I totally agree with this! These are essential advantages in a discussion forum!
The downside is that a verbatim copy means that we can't easily (or at all, currently) remove it if the source post is deleted. If a user wants to delete all traces of their presence on the forum, then the quoted post will still remain as it is not associated with their user account.
We can replace this with a reference, but we lose the flexibility described above. You wouldn't be able to edit it.
Do you consider this a problem?
However, it would be super cool if the reference username, such as @crazycells , would change when that username is changed or deleted. Maybe it can be referenced to the user id , since that never changes?