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Comments on Allow block quotes in comments

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Allow block quotes in comments

+2
−2

When commenting on a post, sometimes I want to comment on a specific paragraph, or similar section. The most natural way to me is to block quote it, however using Markdown to do it doesn't work (it just removes the >). I'm left using regular quotation marks (which work, but are kind of ugly for longer quotations).

Could block quotes be allowed in comments?

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General comments (5 comments)
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When I first read that post, I thought "no way" and added a downvote quite quickly. But as I'm thinking more about it, the whole idea seems more useful to me and I started becoming inventive.

I'm seeing two main "problems" here:

  1. Comments are shorter than posts. Hence they need to be less structured and many formatting elements (headings, lists, ...) shouldn't really be needed. This is also the reason, why they allow only minimal (inline) formatting.
  2. Comments are shown below posts. Because answers are generally more important, comments shouldn't take away too much space. Hence I'd be wary of allowing formatting, that causes a lot of space. Blockquotes aren't the worst (compared to e.g. comments), but they aren't the best either.

But hey, we are going to revamp comments anyway soon, so why not be somehow visionary-inventive? Let's find ways to solve them.

Here are my/some suggestions, we might consider:

  • Allowing comments/comment threads to relate to a specific line/paragraph of posts.

    This could be somehow similar to review comments in GitHub. Something like "annotations". Might also be useful with regards to having post reactions, such as "dangerous", "deprecated", ...

  • Hiding the quoted text behind a button and show it only on demand.

    For example there could be a [ref] (short for reference) button or a button with the icon used in email clients for reply (left arrow) before or at the beginning of comments, which will collapse to the quoted part on click and allows everyone to jump to it easily.

  • or, in combination with the first: Showing line-related comments inline by adding a small comments icon.

    This could be similiar to how comments are shown in PDF programs. Once you click the icon, the comment is expanded as an overlay or you are brought to the comment page or the page scrolls to the comment. Might work similiarly to footnotes.

What are your "crazy comment ideas"?

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1 comment thread

General comments (7 comments)
General comments
Moshi‭ wrote about 4 years ago

Showing line-related comments inline by adding a small comments icon.

Oh, so Wattpad XD

Moshi‭ wrote about 4 years ago

In all seriousness though, your suggestions are good. I wasn't really thinking about space, since blockquotes don't add much height anyway and I basically assumed that the height would be constrained by the hiding-extra-comments mechanic that we already have.

Moshi‭ wrote about 4 years ago

a [ref] (short for reference) button or a button with the icon used in email clients for reply (left arrow)

Something like ⮪ or ⮌ ? (I'm aware you were just listing possible examples, just was curious what you envisioned)

luap42‭ wrote about 4 years ago

@Moshi "Something like ⮪ or ⮌ ? (I'm aware you were just listing possible examples, just was curious what you envisioned)" yes, something like that. (BTW it's somehow ironic, that I need to quote you in a post about quotes :D)

Olin Lathrop‭ wrote about 4 years ago · edited about 4 years ago

I like your out of the box thinking, but I wouldn't want commenters to essentially litter my perfect post with little icons all over the place. I agree comments should be short and not too visually cluttering. How about the quote feature would only write the text in italics or different font, maybe grayed a bit or with a slight gray background? No additional space would be required, and all the comment clutter stays out of the post itself.

luap42‭ wrote about 4 years ago

@Olin Lathrop sure. I’d advocate a separate comment page, where the annotations would be shown inline. (And not on the Post Page, but with a link somewhere to the other page)

ShowMeBillyJo‭ wrote about 4 years ago · edited about 4 years ago

"I wouldn't want commenters to essentially litter my perfect post with little icons all over the place." This really rubs me the wrong way. It practically screams entitlement--not the attitude of a community builder IMO. That out of the way, I actually like the suggestion. MS Word and Google Docs do something similar with chat-bubble icons at the far right of the applicable lines.