RFR: Does blockquoting lead to nastier discussions? | Hacker News Reader

RFR: Does blockquoting lead to nastier discussions?

12 pointspg12 comments

(RFR = Request for Research)

I mentioned I was thinking of adding support for blockquotes, but boredguy8 pointed out that, while more convenient, this might actually make comment threads worse:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=248035

This brought back some alarming memories. I can remember some really nasty arguments on reddit that included a lot of blockquoting.

So this would be an interesting question to know the answer to, if anyone wants to try a quick test. Is blockquoting correlated with a nastier style of arguing? E.g. is there any correlation between the amount of blockquoting and the use of insults, comments beginning with "Um," etc? Scraping randomly chosen reddit comment threads might help answer this. Are there any statistical differences (esp in word frequencies) between threads/comments with lots of blockquoting, and those with little?

View on HN

I often open my posts with a quote pulled from the comment that I'm responding to, just so that the post will make more sense when pulled out of context; e.g. on searchyc.com or when someone is scanning down the page.

But I think that not having formal blockquote formatting subtly encourages me to avoid sprinkling blockquotes throughout my posts -- or, worse, sprinking my words throughout an endless series of blockquotes. Instead I generally restrict myself to one big blockquote, in italics, at the start of my own writing, and I think very carefully before I try to insert a blockquote in the middle of a post. Such mid-post quoting requires careful wording and formatting to make the change in author clear, which is appropriate because it encourages me to just write in my own words and leave other people's words alone. :) I think that's a useful constraint.

The lack of blockquote formatting also encourages us to keep the blockquotes as short as possible. And it helps the flow of comments and responses to flow nicely down the page -- it's easy to see if a block of text is part of a post or part of a response to that post, because (with the exception of code blocks) only responses change the indentation.

In short, I think the missing blockquote formatting is a feature, not a bug.

Me too.

But I think that not having formal blockquote formatting subtly encourages me to avoid sprinkling blockquotes throughout my posts -- or, worse, sprinking my words throughout an endless series of blockquotes. Instead I generally restrict myself to one big blockquote, in italics, at the start of my own writing, and I think very carefully before I try to insert a blockquote in the middle of a post. Such mid-post quoting requires careful wording and formatting to make the change in author clear, which is appropriate because it encourages me to just write in my own words and leave other people's words alone. :) I think that's a useful constraint.

Totally. Needless blockquoting is really annoying.

I agree with this bit, too.

In short, I think the missing blockquote formatting is a feature, not a bug.

Also, blockquoting just clutters up the page needlessly, with the same text twice.

But at least it wouldn't all be italicized.

I initally intended to read 100 random Reddit threads, counting posts containing blockquotes with those not, and counting total inflammatory posts in either case.

I've done four now and I'm getting really antsy.

I'd love to come up with an algorithm to automate this, but discerning a troll post from an inflammatory post from an informative post algorithmically is an Engineering-Very-Hard problem [http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2007/07/17/understanding_engine...].

Anyway, of the four, so far the results have been surprising: Out of 457 total read comments, there were only 25 blockquotes. Of the 25 blockquotes, there were 5 that I (totally subjectively) considered "inflammatory", either because of a strong personal attack, or because of a deliberate misquote of the author ("FTFY"). I only counted 15 inflammatory posts not containing a blockquote -- clearly, I wasn't counting comments that were just lame, tired repetitions of a meme, lacking content, etc.

Because the sample set's so small, there isn't enough information for statistical significance one way or the other. However, in [http://www.reddit.com/info/6s09o/comments/], I did notice that there was a pattern where posts containing blockquotes in a thread tended to be longer, better written, more precise responses to the previous comment. The thread might devolve into a pedantic debate between two people, but it was still more of a discussion than many of the other threads that didn't contain blockquotes at all.

I quite agree with this. People will be nasty with or without blockquoting.

But with blockquoting you'll sometimes have very detailed line by line replies/discussions. And compared to what's usually on reddit that's a big improvement.

I assume the same will happen here. (Although you're starting with a better base, so either you'll get a better result, or you'll revert to the median, i.e. make it worse. No way to find out but to try.)

I personally don't like the kind of arguments where each person responds by splitting up the post and arguing paragraph by paragraph. I've found that it often devolves into nitpicking of spelling and grammar, which I could care less about.

I think arguments can sometimes be useful discussion, but I'd prefer that people respond to a post as a whole rather than respond to each paragraph of a post separately.

What about restrictions for the number of characters per blockquote and the number of blockquotes per post? Say, 2 blockquotes per post and 512 characters per blockquote.

Wouldn't it be much easier to just implement it and see how it goes than to start writing code to sift through redddit? You can always just pull the plug on it if you feel it's having that effect.

I personally am comfortable with the fact that this place isn't really a democracy when it comes to stuff like that.

Seems kinda odd to speculate about what would happen when we could just do it and find out. Especially for something so minor as a change from <i> to <blockquote>.

If a post is bad, that's what the downvote arrow's for...

I know it sounds crazy, but something like *chan-style "threading" could be useful. Each post on that software has a number in its header, and saying ">>123456" provides an anchor link to the above post. Clicking on the number in the header of a post the link to it in the reply box automatically to save copy/pasting. Also, ">text" makes the text green and italic, often used to quote people.

It's simpler than blockquoting while still allowing people to be clear who they're talking to and what about.

But... we have a system of indented replies! And I think it works great!

The best thing about the nifty indented reply system is that flame wars have a characteristic shape on the screen that we all learn to fear: the Downward Slope of Doom. It really makes skimming the page easier.

And you can always find a post's parent by clicking the "parent" tag.

I believe this is called "Fisking".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com