Your replies have been merged.

[proffrink]

Ok but how do these people know you're speaking to them if you're not quoting them anyway? Say you're replying to multiple posters in a thread: Would you say something like:

@MisterG Yes I agree

@proffrink I disagree

Or would you be quoting them or what? If you're having to distinguish between posters then I'm not following the logic by which those posts need to be broken up. Again if someone posts within that 15 minutes you will not be merged, so if there are many active people in one thread you can reply directly to those who're making their own posts quickly.

I understand the point of replying to someone who's above you directly, so is this what you mean? Do you mean that if someone isn't quoting you (and is instead making the following post) it's hard to understand which part of your post they're replying to?

 

[MisterG]

Can we PLEASE turn this off? It's utterly rage inducing when you're trying to reply to multiple people answering multiple questions!

I agree

I can reply instantly to a comment posted after mine. Anything above mine and I just reply with new line. I don't have to edit anything twice, just make sure I've formatted my comment to include the people I'm replying to. 

You don't need 5 comments to reply to 5 people, just the one. That's how I see it anyway. 

ok

The other annoying thing it does when it Merges posts is it doesn't leave a line between your previous post and the newer merged post.

So you could have a new paragraph talking about a different point but it's in the same paragraph...

Like this (The newer merged post is in the light grey colour)

Oh fuck.. it did it properly that time... 

Then what in the fuck... 

But not that time..

Hmmm.

Nor that time..

What If I leave a space before typing the new post..

Bingo!

Eh?

Ok but how do these people know you're speaking to them if you're not quoting them anyway? Say you're replying to multiple posters in a thread: Would you say something like:

@MisterG Yes I agree

@proffrink I disagree

Or would you be quoting them or what? If you're having to distinguish between posters then I'm not following the logic by which those posts need to be broken up. Again if someone posts within that 15 minutes you will not be merged, so if there are many active people in one thread you can reply directly to those who're making their own posts quickly.

Gets messy if lots of sub replies merged

I've quoted 4 people separately, it's now all merged.  If they want to now reply it gets messy as each will be replying to a differen bit of the same (my) post

 

[proffrink]

Perhaps a line break and/or a 'merged from another post' would be helpful (as @L3wisD was mentioning)? Something like this:

Can we PLEASE turn this off? It's utterly rage inducing when you're trying to reply to multiple people answering multiple questions!

I agree

-- merged from another post --

I can reply instantly to a comment posted after mine. Anything above mine and I just reply with new line. I don't have to edit anything twice, just make sure I've formatted my comment to include the people I'm replying to. 

You don't need 5 comments to reply to 5 people, just the one. That's how I see it anyway. 

ok

-- merged from another post --

The other annoying thing it does when it Merges posts is it doesn't leave a line between your previous post and the newer merged post.

So you could have a new paragraph talking about a different point but it's in the same paragraph...

Like this (The newer merged post is in the light grey colour)

Oh fuck.. it did it properly that time... 

Then what in the fuck... 

But not that time..

Hmmm.

Nor that time..

What If I leave a space before typing the new post..

Bingo!

Eh?

-- merged from another post --

Ok but how do these people know you're speaking to them if you're not quoting them anyway? Say you're replying to multiple posters in a thread: Would you say something like:

@MisterG Yes I agree

@proffrink I disagree

Or would you be quoting them or what? If you're having to distinguish between posters then I'm not following the logic by which those posts need to be broken up. Again if someone posts within that 15 minutes you will not be merged, so if there are many active people in one thread you can reply directly to those who're making their own posts quickly.

Gets messy if lots of sub replies merged

 

[MisterG]

Or maybe combine with reducing the 15mins to 5 or even 3?

The forum is generally good, so this is a minor niggle in the grand scheme of things, but does get annoying at times.

 

[Lozart]

@proffrink I fail to see how this is any more expedient than just not merging replies though. If you have to separate each quoted reply with more text and white space then you're just taking up more page with each reply.

 

[proffrink]

Actually we're really not. I can do you a mockup if you'd like, but you'd be surprised how much padding is in each post reply. Also remember that threads tick over into a new page after 25 posts (irrespective of how little content is in each of them) to save on load times and the like.

Additionally, there are a lot of - to put it lightly - lazy posters who will (and have) exploited this in the past with single sentence streams of consciousness that quickly use up a lot of space because only 30% of the available box (already height constrained by their profile) is used up. That previous post with quotes is far from always the case.

 

[Deva]

Multi-post is there for a reason and means you gather everything from that author in one shot. You expect a new post to belong to someone else. A properly multi-quoted post is a thing to behold and the very reason the system exists. Creating a new post every time takes up more space both in terms of screen space, behind the scenes and forces people to scroll further. 

 

[proffrink]

Nothing binding, but I just want to gauge interest via a poll on this:

 

[djben9]

Where was question 2???? only see 1 and 3!!

can we do one next where pics / links are removed as that’s also annoying.... if not already done...... one of my gripes in my previous mod days  :lol:

 

[proffrink]

Not sure why it did that, but there are only two questions :S

What do you mean with pics? We did truncated quotes ages ago.

 

[djben9]

Must be a system error, or can’t count!!

I was thinking of removing them on replies/quotes 

truncated is ok 

Does it use more ‘space’..???

 

[proffrink]

I'm surprised you've not seen them in action as they've been about for a while now. Quotes are limited by height (in pixels) and collapse down to that size. There's a 'show all' button to see the whole thing.

 

[djben9]

Yeah I have seen it, just bit hectic work at mo so prob not focussed enough!! Thanks for doing it, it has helped on the mobile, I guess it can be useful to keep the quotes pics thinking about it so we know what we are referring to 

was my no.1 hate!!!! ...... as you know!

 

[Sacarathe]

On the subject of auto merge, does everyone following (eg in PM) get a prompt when you make a reply which got merged into a post they already read?

 

[proffrink]

If you quote someone - irrespective of how or where (with the exception being in PMs - you'll get a notification. As far as I'm aware, this will happen in merged posts too and internally for PMs.

The issue with PM merging is that they won't get the usual email as far as I know. I'm looking into this as I think we can all agree that post merging in PMs is silly, but it appears to be easier said than done to disable it just in PMs.

 

[djben9]

Quite like the ability to edit PMs, although need to do it quick before it’s read 

 

[proffrink]

That's not what I was talking about though.

 

[djben9]

Yeah I know , just like it 

 I don’t think it’s worth merging PMs , most people probably delete them after a while, forum posts need different kind of management 

Sorry on phone and struggling to read tonight!!

 

[Gepard]

most people probably delete them after a while 

With the exception of sales that's exactly what I do. No point hoarding messages from months ago when the topic is dead. Just wastes my precious storage. 

Speaking of which does the forum log a record of all PMs @proffrink? Can admins access these if there's a dispute?

 

[proffrink]

The forums log things like your use of the PM system, but not the PM itself. in theory there is the ability to log in as a user and read their PMs but that's never something that mods would have the power to do or indeed that I'd ever do. You'll have to take my word on that of course, but believe me when I say that nothing bores me more than the thought of reading any of our members PMs for any length of time.

We added some clarification on this in the rules not long back and the admission was made that we'll never be able to resolve disputes if someone tries hard enough. What we can do is request that a scammer make a thread in a private area (which a moderator or admin can create for them) so that we can see they're not just ignoring messages.

@djben9 You still have the wrong idea on what post merging is. Remember PMs act as threads in their own right, so when you reply to one you're essentially 'posting' within that PM. Make two 'posts' within 15 minutes and they get merged (even within PMs), which is a problem uniquely in PMs because most users are notified via email with that 'post' - if two 'posts' are merged within a PM, a second email is not sent and you'll get no notification on the forums either. This isn't a problem with threads.

It won't merge 'conversations', which I think is what you were talking about given the reference to deleting them. Your PM inbox is limited by the number of conversations that you can have stored at any one time. Not the posts/PMs within those conversations.