Just wondering if there has been any discussion about adding a quote feature to the forum mod. I do not mind copying and pasting, so this is really just born of idle curiousity.
-- Art
Art,
No idea if this has been discussed but I like the idea. The first BB system I used was FirstClass and it used to block text in the origonal with a grey background. When you inserted your reply it appeared with the normal white background around it. It was really handy and encouraged people to leave bits of the origonal post in the reply - making it easier for others to come in on a thread. I saw more quotes in replies in FC than I do in these forums and I think this adds value.
Just my 2p worth...
Richard
I agree that it is often very helpful to include an appropriate quote from a previous post.
Of course, with so much high-end Moodle development going on right now, this may not happen for quite some time. If ever.
Anyway, we can always copy/paste.
-- Art
Of course, with so much high-end Moodle development going on right now, this may not happen for quite some time. If ever.
Anyway, we can always copy/paste.
-- Art
Hi All!
Glad you brought this up Art!!
My "itty bitty" opinion on this would be that it would be a nice option to have. I do not think it is necessary on each post, but, it would be helpful in responding to many of the questions and issues that come up in the forums. Also, as previously mentioned, it would make it a bit easier to follow threads sometimes.
I do feel it sould be an option though and not automatic.
WP1
Glad you brought this up Art!!
My "itty bitty" opinion on this would be that it would be a nice option to have. I do not think it is necessary on each post, but, it would be helpful in responding to many of the questions and issues that come up in the forums. Also, as previously mentioned, it would make it a bit easier to follow threads sometimes.
I do feel it sould be an option though and not automatic.
WP1
Being able to quote would be nice and it sounds socially constructive
: It would encourage interaction.
I just marked a a few students homework. The abilty to press a quote button, that ideally puts the student text into another color or after the ubiquitous "> " would have been a real boon.
Good idea Art
If the quoted text where in another colour then the teachers comments would, if inserted in the centre of the student text, also turn into the student text colour, and the "> " would appear at the beginning of paragraphs only.
So the ultimate teacher friendly quoting mechanism would quote by line or sentence putting <div class="quoted"></div> or just "> " and </p> around each line or sentence. quoting by line would be really nice but there is no set line length in a moodle forum, and it would lead to more of the two character code garbling issues (where a break is added in the center of two characters) so quoting by sentence would be great.
Hold on a second.... When one recieves notification of forum posts they are split into lines. So there is in a sense a standard Moodle line length. I guess that Asian language forum post notification mails are not split into lines though...yes.
As well as being useful for teachers, my Japanese we-hate-interaction-students tend to ignore each other on forums, posting mutually independent posts. It would thus be nice to be able to make "quote" the standard method of positing to a forum, so that if they really wanted to ignore people then they would have to start by deleting the previous posts. But then again, this might lead to those posts that we hate on mailing lists that quote everytying previous below a few words like "really interesting post."
Tim
takemoto
Perhaps there could be a choice of "reply" or "reply with quote." That would avoid the tendency to lazily quote everything and limit it to when there really was a need for it.
I believe this to be a really important feature, not just a less useful frill.
In scenarios with e-mail notification of new posts and high-traffic forums, it can get quite confusing to receive via e-mail answers from different forums and on different posts and not being able to immediatelly "see" what the original issue was.
Such a more mailinglist-like usage gets hardly practicable without some kind of automatic quoting feature.
Regards.
In WebCT, the forums not only have this option of choice between
"reply" and "reply with quote" but also "reply privately". I have found
all those options really useful. The "private reply" is of the "reply with
quote" type, i.e. the message to which you are replying is already
pasted in your reply window.
It is indeed useful to be able to send a "private" reply to a student simply by clicking a button. Of course, in Moodle, all you have to do is to click on the icon or name linking directly to the sender's profile and, from there, click on the link to their e-mail address. It should also be noted that in WebCT private replies are sent to an individual's internal e-mail box, since WebCT has such an internal mail system, a feature I would very much like to see implemented in Moodle.
I don't know if moodlers on this forum realize that whereas "copying & pasting" is to us a trivial operation, it is beyond the capacities of a fairly large number of our students (at least my own students...). Which makes a "reply with quote" a useful alternative to copy & paste.
Joseph_R
It is indeed useful to be able to send a "private" reply to a student simply by clicking a button. Of course, in Moodle, all you have to do is to click on the icon or name linking directly to the sender's profile and, from there, click on the link to their e-mail address. It should also be noted that in WebCT private replies are sent to an individual's internal e-mail box, since WebCT has such an internal mail system, a feature I would very much like to see implemented in Moodle.
I don't know if moodlers on this forum realize that whereas "copying & pasting" is to us a trivial operation, it is beyond the capacities of a fairly large number of our students (at least my own students...). Which makes a "reply with quote" a useful alternative to copy & paste.
Joseph_R
I like reply and reply with quote, but I'm a bit uneasy about reply privately. In a classroom setting, would we want students whispering to one another in class about something being discussed, or shared with everyone? And personally, I think making it easy to reply privately simply makes it easy for students to talk badly about one another behind eachothers' backs. It is much better in my opinion to encourage discussion above the board. Students can still contact one another, but making it a bit more work for them I think encourages a better learning environment.
In order to get the ball rolling on this reply with quote idea, I've submitted it to the bug tracker as bug 2775.
In order to get the ball rolling on this reply with quote idea, I've submitted it to the bug tracker as bug 2775.
> making it a bit more work for them I think encourages a better learning environment.
Could not the same be said for quoting? I'm a bit concerned about seeing Moodle forums full of reams and reams of repeated text, like some other web forums are.
Could not the same be said for quoting? I'm a bit concerned about seeing Moodle forums full of reams and reams of repeated text, like some other web forums are.
> I'm a bit concerned about seeing Moodle forums full of reams and reams of repeated text, like some other web forums are.
Quite agree, Martin. You've got a strong point here. Unfortunately very few forum users have the knack of pruning from previous posts the essential part to be retained in their own reply (or they don't bother). Not offering an easy "reply with quote" option in the forum interface is a good way to fight off those dreadful reams.
Joseph_R
Two potential negative 'social' consequences of quoting are that responses can become bitty point by point rebuttals rather than a well thought out response to a summary of the other person's thoughts, and that such responses can tend towards 1 on 1 dialogues rather than opening out discussion to other forum participants. These are both my opinions but I'll see if I can find some research, or even just some other people's opinions, to back them up.
As an introduction here's a link to a weblog entry that argues against my suggestion in response to an article or two that I do agree with (to some degree at least), in order to show both sides of the issue.
The second two articles are an informative and entertaining read even if you disagree with some, or even many, of the conclusions. The author takes a very strong anti-quoting stance (amongst many other sweeping statements), as can be seen here:
Q . Why dont you show me the post Im replying to, while I compose my reply?
A. Because that will tempt you to quote a part of it in your own reply. Anything I can do to reduce the amount of quoting will increase the fluidity of the conversation, making topics interesting to read. Whenever someone quotes something from above, the person who reads the topic has to read the same thing twice in a row, which is pointless and automatically guaranteed to be boring.
and here:
Usenet clients have this big-R command which is used to reply to a message while quoting the original message with those elegant >s in the left column. And the early newsreaders were not threaded, so if you wanted to respond to someones point coherently, you had to quote them using the big-R feature. This led to a particularly Usenet style of responding to an argument: the line-by-line nitpick. Its fun for the nitpicker but never worth reading. (By the way, the political bloggers, newcomers to the Internet, have reinvented this technique, thinking they were discovering something fun and new, and called it fisking, for reasons I wont go into. Dont worry, its not dirty.) Even though human beings had been debating for centuries, a tiny feature of a software product produced a whole new style of debating.
I mentioned this in another thread about a similar suggestion, but I think that threading (as used by Moodle) and auto-quoting in unthreaded discussions (as used in phpBB-style forums) are actually solutions to the same problem.
Also, I don't know how many other Moodlers are using Gmail from Google, but my favourite feature by far is how it organises emails into conversations and removes all the repetition from quotes. (Unfortunately it only gets this half-right with Moodle conversations at the moment)
Hi David
Thank you for your informed post and the links provided. Lots of food for thought on Michael Feldstein's site.
And I agree that threading -as used by Moodle (and WebCT)- is quite an effective solution, which should preempt the need for (over-)quoting. So maybe we don't need a "quote" facility in Moodle forums after all.
Joseph_R
Thank you for your informed post and the links provided. Lots of food for thought on Michael Feldstein's site.
And I agree that threading -as used by Moodle (and WebCT)- is quite an effective solution, which should preempt the need for (over-)quoting. So maybe we don't need a "quote" facility in Moodle forums after all.
Joseph_R
Could not the same be said for quoting? I'm a bit concerned about
seeing Moodle forums full of reams and reams of repeated text, like
some other web forums are.
I agree with you, but I think this would be a useful feature for many teachers that the admin/teacher should be able to turn on/off for each individual forum. That would solve the issue for you here. With my classes I would not want it available except for one assignment that I give.Martin,
It is a good point you're making here. But my worry above was JUST related to the e-mail notifications.
I personally don't mind not to have an automatic quoted reply when I'm writting in forums: I can always copy&paste from the original post I'm replying to, and make myself clear parafrasing, etc.
The issue I was raising was related to the e-mails. I don't know you people, but when I'm subscribed to many forums I get numerous messages, from different forums, from different courses, even from different moodle sites, and if the e-mail is a reply to some previous message, sometimes it's is impossible to tell where that e-mail belongs to.
This is particularly problematic in scenarious with "multi-teacher courses" and "multi-course teachers" : sometimes there are questions more directed to one particular teacher, but still other teachers in that course would like to be updated on what's going on, without having to login all the time.
The e-mail motifications they receive, as it is now, are of little use, and are very close to be seen as spam.
I have direct experience of such scenarios: some teachers even disabled subscription to forums, and thus renoucing to use this useful feature.
I've seen the discussion about new forum features in 1.6. So, operatively, how about just a simple checkbox with something like "Quote original in e-mail notification"?
Thanks for your attention.
In your mail program, try turning on the "message threads" feature - you'll find all your messages are indented in your mailbox and grouped together.
Of course, it is a possibility. But isn't it cutting the bull's head too much? For several reasons, I'd say:
the feature you're talking about is not omnipresent;
it generally doesn't work if the messages are in different mailboxes (e.g. if I trashed some messages, they will not be grouped);
it is not working too well on some clients, and is sometimes, for less experienced users, quite complicated to obtain, use and understand;
it is generally not nice nor user-friendly to suggest the way people should use their desktop software: it is not nice as this seems to me as an implicit Moodle philosophy (keep everything strictly Web-based, and server-side as much as possible is I believe - one of the commandments for that particular reason); it is also not nice that when I'm evangelising the general use of Moodle in my University, such little things actually raise barriers for the use of Moodle.
Please, do not misunderstand me, I personally don't have problems, and again, as I said, it is possible to solve it the way you're suggesting.
As a member of few open-source communities, I well know what it means to receive tens of requests for checkboxes a month , as I'm aware how implementing them all would rapidly break down the software, its integrity, its usability, and its spirit.
I was just pointing out an issue that as far as I have seen has not been discussed here in forums, asking for community's opinion.
Cordially.
> keep everything strictly Web-based
Yes I agree, this really is the best way - that's why there are those links in the emails such as "see this post in context" and "show parent" and "reply", all three show the context.
I only pointed out the threading in clients was supported for those that really wanted it or knew how to use it. Moodle use doesn't rely on it.
I think your suggestion including a copy of the preceding post could be implemented as an option (not as standard because it would double the quantity of mail being received) but it's not really a priority for me right now when there are other ways (ie the built-in links or mailbox threading) that don't require much effort ...
Yes I agree, this really is the best way - that's why there are those links in the emails such as "see this post in context" and "show parent" and "reply", all three show the context.
I only pointed out the threading in clients was supported for those that really wanted it or knew how to use it. Moodle use doesn't rely on it.
I think your suggestion including a copy of the preceding post could be implemented as an option (not as standard because it would double the quantity of mail being received) but it's not really a priority for me right now when there are other ways (ie the built-in links or mailbox threading) that don't require much effort ...
> I only pointed out the threading in clients was supported for those that really wanted it
> or knew how to use it. Moodle use doesn't rely on it.
Of course, that was clear
> [...] not as standard because it would double the quantity of mail being received [...]
As you write this, a doubt came to me that maybe I wasn't clear enough. I was not suggesting to send 2 e-mail notifications for every new post in the forum: the original message plus the reply message. I was suggesting to put the reply message plus the quoted original message text in ONE SINGE e-mail. So you'd still receive just one e-mail notification, but containing also the text of the message it's being replyed at.
I don't see the "doubling" here (unless you were referring at the size of the e-mail, but that would really be of insignificant relevance).
Sorry for monopolising your time in the last 30 minutes (I imagine you're busy with the 1.5 release)
Ciao.
The problem with relying on threading to follow the conversation is that not everyone thinks in terms of threading. Many people may just click on any reply link on the page to post a reply, even if it is not the specific post they are replying to. Or they may be replying to more than one message in a single message.
Quite agree with the potential dangers of "students talking badly about
one another behind each others' backs" (not to mention talking badly
about the teacher
).
In my message, I was actually thinking of the possibility for the teacher to reply privately to a student's post. E.g. in a foreign language course, to make private remarks about language mistakes, in order to avoid the embarrassment of a public correction
.
Or for any other circumstance where private communication is to be preferred
over public one. May I propose that we should avoid going to the
extreme view that even within a "collaborative learning environment"
public is always better than private and collective always better than
individual ? 
Joseph_R
PS Thanks for posting the topic in the bug tracker.
).In my message, I was actually thinking of the possibility for the teacher to reply privately to a student's post. E.g. in a foreign language course, to make private remarks about language mistakes, in order to avoid the embarrassment of a public correction
.
Or for any other circumstance where private communication is to be preferred
over public one. May I propose that we should avoid going to the
extreme view that even within a "collaborative learning environment"
public is always better than private and collective always better than
individual ? Joseph_R
PS Thanks for posting the topic in the bug tracker.
I realize you did this posting several years ago but...
I have searched and can find no other reference to a reply privately option with in the forum for at least the teacher of the course.
I understand the option of clicking the name and sending a message but it doesn't connect to the posting unless you copy and paste the posting.
Do you know if this topic is listed anywhere else, perhaps i am missing the mark with my search options?
Many thanks for any light you can shine in my direction.