[ POLL ] Flooding a Thread.

Post Reply New Topic

"Flooding" is the label I have attached to the practice by a single member of submitting multiple consecutive posts in reply to one or more previous posts, when a single post addressing all those previous posts would suffice.  Sometimes a member might also submit a new post in reply to each sentence of a single post instead of submitting a single post that addresses each sentence all at once.

What is your opinion on "Flooding" threads?

You may choose only one poll option; but you may change your choice at any time.

If you select a poll option, please also leave a comment; and if you leave a comment, please also select a poll option.

Thank you.

I actually can't read quote on quote on quote posts let alone these flooding posts (I think it's dyslexia) so I either ignore them or just respond to the final response.

Yes just voted.

If there's no rule violation, what's the problem? If you don't like to read quote on quote on quote posts, simply don't read them. Sheesh.

I feel personally attacked.

I'll tell you why I do it. I'm used to texting more than using forums and I use my phone to make posts. I wrote in a very conscious train of thought way. I hit send and then think of something to add to what I just wrote.

In the past I've gone back to add to my post, but then found someone has already replied to it, so it have started just writing a new post.

To finish my thought.

I used to put every quote I was replying to into one comment, but after having the captcha devour my long as hell replies and having to sift through walls of other peoples text to find someones response to me in the middle of it, I just respond to everything in different, individual posts. I find the wall-of-text when people respond to multiple quotes at one time confusing and irritating.

Usually when there's an argument going on in a thread there's lots of posts that contains a quote of a quote of a quote of a quote of a quote...and so on.

I don't know how they manage to get pass the CAPTCHA like that because whenever I have more than 2 quotes in a post I get caught by CAPTCHA and it sometimes doesn't let me submit at all, just goes round in a loop.

I don’t like “quote trees.” It gets confusing as to who “said” what.

A comment on option one in the poll.

Like many, I find the interminable quote trees a real distraction and almost impossible to read - I've seen them as deep as fifteen quotes. On a mobile platform, where manipulating threads and responses is already tricky enough, this must be virtually impossible to handle.

This situation isn't helped by the forum post layout, where the most obvious button which indicates it will initiate a response to a post is the "Quote" button. Many posters don't seem to associate the "Post Reply" button at the end of a post list as a viable means of responding to the post immediately above and that, plus the "Quote" button, often results in a tree of what would have been better handled as a series of individual responses addressing relevant, quoted parts of posts.

In the past I've tried asking on a thread that the quotes are kept to a minimum and quote exactly what the response addresses, to no avail. Sometimes "it preserves the context" is given as a reason - which is reasonable for maybe two or three quotes, but there's no reason to continually repost what often amounts to a significant portion of the entire thread, where the context already exists.
I have sometimes edited the more lengthy quote trees so a post quotes only what it is responding to from the tree - but it's a lengthy process and quite honestly, I have other things to do.

I can't do anything about the post/buttons layout but there is this, under Posting Specifications in the site rules:
"Posts which disrupt the page format may be edited or deleted by the Moderators."

I feel that many of these quote trees often do disrupt the page format, to the point of it being unusable.
It's something of a (further) shortcoming of the forum software in that it allows these trees to grow indefinitely - but, there is an option available to limit the depth.

I am considering making that limit the depth of quotes to eight, and this seems a useful thread on which to canvas opinions.

So, have at it...