Can the quote button be added while in "Post Reply?"

[tobefirst ⚽️]

On a phpbb3 board I run, I noticed that, while replying to a message, you can add quotes to your reply box by clicking on little "quote" buttons in the "Topic Review" section, below the reply box.

I feel this would be rather useful and unobtrusive for this site. I'm aware of how to quote and multiquote the traditional way around here, but sometimes I just hit reply and then think, "Oh, I meant to quote that guy," or sometimes I get halfway through a response and then think, "I'd like to reply to X, too."

Is this something that could be added?

 

[bigandy]

ooh, +1.

i do think that would be a worthy and useful addition to the forums.

 

[theLimit]

That would be nice. I often find myself using the quote button on the toolbar and copy/paste things from the Topic Review. Being able to just click a button on the post from the Review would be much nicer.

 

[Doctor Q]

Is this something that could be added?

Technically, yes it can be done.

In general, we can add a forum feature by:

1. Enabling features of the vBulletin software we use.
2. Installing plug-ins or compatible third-party products.
3. Tweaking the code ourselves.
4. Making major changes to the code ourselves.

We've done all of the above on occasion, but obviously prefer #1 to the other choices. We would do #4 only for a feature that gave us a significant benefit because of the development and code maintenance effort required. Plug-ins and tweaks can require a bit of initial and ongoing effort as well.

Quoting from the Topic Review would be a nice convenience, but it is not a vBulletin feature, and it would not be a "tweak". Perhaps there's a plug-in for this feature, but it may fall into category #4. If so, chances are we wouldn't consider this feature to be important enough to code ourselves.

On the other hand, the developers of vBulletin have to compete with other forum software, so they may very well add the feature in an upcoming release. That's how we gained the Multi-Quote feature.

 

[tobefirst ⚽️]

Thanks for the reply, Doctor Q. I don't have any experience with administrating VB, so I wasn't sure how easily this would be to implement. I also know that you guys like to tweak things as little as possible to make upgrades go smoother. I think this would be a good thing to implement if it does ever become a native option for VB, or is easily done via a plugin. I won't lose too much sleep, I promise, in the mean time. (;

 

[Eraserhead]

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=250875 is the relevant thread on vbulletin's website.