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Quote accuracy

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:06 am
by BicycleEater
Not sure this should be here or in suggestions, but:
Why is there no check for whether what you have quoted is actually what was posted, or a way of approving quotes of yourself - There is nothing stopping me just changing what someone said in a quote of that person:
SomeoneElse wrote: Sat Jan 01, 2000 12:00 am This was just chosen at random - sorry if anyone gets this as a notification. Note that the time, user-name, user ID, and post ID are all different. TBH I don't know who will get the notification
It seems odd to me that there is no validation that I can see... Although I will work this out when I post this (please don't ban me for breaking quoting rules).

Even something as simple as checking that the time, user-name, userID, and postID match would help a lot, as then if someone is mis-quoted, they are certain to know about it. At the minute, by simply changing the user-ID to your own, you can hide the quote from the originator... I think.
EDIT:
Although I didn't get a notification from this, so who knows...

Re: Quote accuracy

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:08 am
by Deadlock989
phpBB has been around for 20 years. It's open source so feel free to submit a patch.

Re: Quote accuracy

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:10 am
by BicycleEater
OK, cool.
TBH I was just as much experimenting with what would happen if I corrupted a quote like that.

Re: Quote accuracy

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 1:08 am
by NotRexButCaesar
In general I have never seen this misused before. I think that this is a place where the honor system and a communal trust moderate well.

Re: Quote accuracy

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 9:55 am
by mmmPI
BicycleEater wrote: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:06 am Not sure this should be here or in suggestions, but:
Why is there no check for whether what you have quoted is actually what was posted,[add tons of crap here] or a way of approving quotes of yourself - There is nothing stopping me just changing what someone said in a quote of that person.
there is a little arrow like this one => ^ juste afer the word "wrote" introducing the quotation. It should link toward the quoted post. If not you can always claim the quotation is fallacious, and the link allow to verify the context and the accuracy of the quote.

nothing prevent anyone from doing a quote without this link.
random unlinked quote

As AmericanPatriot, i have never seen this misused in this forum.

Sometimes quote are modified to sum up, also it allows to format part of the original quotation to highlight what you are refering to precisely.
BicycleEater wrote: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:06 am Not sure this should be here or in suggestions, but: (long text)
At the minute, by simply changing the user-ID to your own, you can hide the quote from the originator... I think.
EDIT:
Although I didn't get a notification from this, so who knows...
If you click the arrow you'll get transferred to the original post_id.

Re: Quote accuracy

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 10:20 am
by Kyralessa
Unfortunately, after someone has been quoted verbatim, there's also nothing stopping that person from editing his/her post to say something different.

So if a quote doesn't match the supposed original, there's no way to know which is correct.

Here's an example where I quoted, and then the original poster changed his text. You can see he changed it because the change doesn't make grammatical sense.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=93630&p=529743&hili ... rn#p529743

Re: Quote accuracy

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:05 pm
by Koub
As far as I have experimented, quoting on phpbb forums has is just a formatting effect. No subscription to the thread for the user you have quoted, no check whatsoever.
Modifying a quote of someone's post is common
BicycleEater wrote: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:06 am [...]
Although I didn't get a notification from this, so who knows...
Pretty much like so. As such it's a useful feature. It has seldom been abused on purpose on this forum afaik. And if someone came to do so, that wouldn't last long.

Re: Quote accuracy

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 2:23 pm
by ickputzdirwech
Koub wrote: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:05 pm As far as I have experimented, quoting on phpbb forums has is just a formatting effect. No subscription to the thread for the user you have quoted, no check whatsoever.
You get a notification if someone quoted you. (at least I do, I don't even know if I could disable it)

Re: Quote accuracy

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 2:41 pm
by Loewchen
ickputzdirwech wrote: Wed Jan 13, 2021 2:23 pm You get a notification if someone quoted you. (at least I do, I don't even know if I could disable it)
You can, in board preferences.

Re: Quote accuracy

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 3:24 pm
by BicycleEater
mmmPI wrote:Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:06 am there is a little arrow like this one => ^ juste afer the word "wrote" introducing the quotation. It should link toward the quoted post. If not you can always claim the quotation is fallacious, and the link allow to verify the context and the accuracy of the quote.

nothing prevent anyone from doing a quote without this link.
Like this one you mean?

It just seems like the rules are a bit relaxed - even just forcing a link to be given would help, as then you would have to reference the original.
I know what you mean about the honour system, and I am OK with that, it just seems awfully troll-able.

I am fine with this being considered closed, just wanted to make sure I wasn't the only person who has seen this as a kind of weakness...

Re: Quote accuracy

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 3:32 pm
by Deadlock989
BicycleEater wrote: Wed Jan 13, 2021 3:24 pm I am fine with this being considered closed, just wanted to make sure I wasn't the only person who has seen this as a kind of weakness...
You may be the only one. I have been using various kinds of forum software on and off for ~25 years. None of them have had the features you suggest. Koub is right, it's just formatting, and it's not intended to be anything more than that.

phpBB is one of the least worst open source forum platforms available and they haven't seen fit to address this issue since 2001.

Re: Quote accuracy

Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 5:33 pm
by BicycleEater
Fine. I guess I am just too used to less friendly areas of the internet, where I would expect everything to disintegrate into chaos - doing fake quotes of admins, using deleted messages as a way of making it look legit, seeing if you can get people banned for hate speach, etc.
But the moderators are active enough, and the community nice enough, that this isn't a problem - that is a pretty good thing on the whole.
Thanks for all your responses.