User blog comment:Toughpigs/Wikia's new Forum demo/@comment-1411998-20120727231204/@comment-781424-20120728223204

My point is, if a feature is ubiquitous, that doesn't mean it's good. See this example for quote misuse. People are quoting giant posts (in this case, pictures) to add a minor reply. On forums that have quote feature, it happens all the time, and it will be happening on Wikia if quoting is implemented.

Regarding the quoting in general, I'm repeating myself, but I have to reiterate, that quoting, at least on the forums, is not good. Verbal communications always involve re-interpreting and non-literal quoting. Literal quotes were traditional in literature because there was no other way to embed content (no links). Naturally, quotes were short. However, short quotes are always out of context. Unlike literature, forum communications consist of people replying to relatively short posts. Coupled with the availability of hyperlinks, there's no reason to substitute the actual original content with excerpts from it, drawing phrases out of the original context and increasing the amount of text on the page for no good reason. With the in-page index links, everything is already essentially in one place. It's perfectly reasonable to expect people to click the link to instantly see the post the reply is adressed at. Making people re-read stuff is not, especially when it also brings the spam problem.