Can someone explain how this starts and how to fix it, as some have seemed to do? And maybe make this a sticky?

Darn it, I clicked on this because I thought you had the answer :) I have the same question.

T

timatkn: "Darn it, I clicked on this because I thought you had the answer :) I have the sam question.


T"

It happens when someone quotes someone but deletes the end of the quote. The tags to italicize a quote start with a less than sign, the word quote, and a greater than sign. The quote then ends with the same thing but with a / before the word quote. You can see all this when you do a quote reply and it shows up that way when you are writing your message. I can see tamtkn's quote above with the tags but when you read the thread it will just be in italics and the sepia color. Click on one of the messages with "reply with quote" to see this.

What happens is someone decides to shorten the quote (often a good idea) and accidentally deletes the second tag.

What can fix it is starting a new reply with the second tag.

billconner: "Can someone explain how this starts and how to fix it, as some have seemed to do?

And now here I am making the mistake on purpose. Note how I deleted the end of Bill's question.

See all screwed up.

And now fixed.

I hope.

OK, it takes starting a new message for the full fix.

Yep

andym: "OK, it takes starting a new message for the full fix."

Seeing if I mess it up.

Okay I will try to fix it next

andym: "OK, it takes starting a new message for the full fix."

Seeing if this fixes it

timatkn: "OK, it takes starting a new message for the full fix."

Did this fix it?

while we are at it... how do folk post decent size pictures occasionally?
especially on trip reports?
thankee

dr bob

This message has had HTML content edited out of it.

I know there are folks that know this better than me, but seems there are more than one cause and more than one fix.

The best solution is for a moderator to go in and fix the original problem, but sometimes these thing happen on lesser watched threads.

It's also a little hard to show either the problem or the solution by typing it, because everyone's browser would regard it as a command rather than text.

This image helps show how some of these run away quotes start.....

Here is one inelegant way to fix this most of the time. I know there is at least one other way out there but have not figured it out yet.

Ok... I fixed the broken posts that started this mess. Fer cryin’ out loud, don’t do this on purpose! There are enough accidental problems to fix!

Here is an odd thing that can cause them. All that is needed to avoid is adding a space after the > symbol.

Jackfish: "Ok... I fixed the broken posts that started this mess. Fer cryin’ out loud, don’t do this on purpose! There are enough accidental problems to fix!"

We are trying to learn how to fix them, that’s why we did it on purpose :)

Now I know how to cause the problem but how did you fix it?


BTW I really had to hold back on not messing them up again just to mess with ya :)

T

Jackfish: "Ok... I fixed the broken posts that started this mess. Fer cryin’ out loud, don’t do this on purpose! There are enough accidental problems to fix!"

It was confusing. Kind of made liars out of them.

timatkn: "Now I know how to cause the problem but how did you fix it? "

AndyM pretty much nailed the explanation. It all boils down to accidentally deleting a part of the < quote > or < / quote > on the ends of what's being quoted from another post.

Yes, it's usually a good idea to shorten a quote when posting, but it's easy to mess up if not careful. I have no idea why messing up one post changes all the posts that follow, but it does.

billconner: "It was confusing. Kind of made liars out of them."

I don't think anyone was being a liar.

Jackfish: "

timatkn: "Now I know how to cause the problem but how did you fix it? "

AndyM pretty much nailed the explanation. It all boils down to accidentally deleting a part of the < quote > or < / quote > on the ends of what's being quoted from another post.


Yes, it's usually a good idea to shorten a quote when posting, but it's easy to mess up if not careful. I have no idea why messing up one post changes all the posts that follow, but it does."

Sorry to beat a dead horse so to speak...but I now understand how it occurs...but when when I tried to follow Andy’s advice to fix it I couldn’t. How did you fix the ones I screwed up. Pretend like I have no idea what you are tak8mg about :)

T

The reason that it screws up all the following posts is that your web browser doesn’t really understand posts. It just knows that it was told to start a certain type style and wasn’t told to stop.

It might be possible to program the website to start every post with codes to set the type style to the default. That would be a little extra code but would prevent mistakes from continuing from post to post. I often do that when writing programs that make plots. At the start of every plot I’ll set things back to defaults (black lines, normal thickness, no dashes) so that I don’t have to keep track of whether I changed those things earlier.

FYI, I ran a website back when we edited all the html code by hand in a simple text editor. So, I’ve made all these mistakes plenty of times.

andym: FYI, I ran a website back when we edited all the html code by hand in a simple text editor. So, I’ve made all these mistakes plenty of times. "

Ahhh, the good old days! I did the same way back when. I remember being thrilled when I found something that had a preview window so I didn't have to save a page and then re-open in a browser.

bfurlow: "

andym: FYI, I ran a website back when we edited all the html code by hand in a simple text editor. So, I’ve made all these mistakes plenty of times. "

Ahhh, the good old days! I did the same way back when. I remember being thrilled when I found something that had a preview window so I didn't have to save a page and then re-open in a browser.
"

I think I still have a copy of FrontPage laying around somewhere. Don't think it works with IE6 yet though.

If your not using vi to edit html files, get off my lawn!

If you want to shorten a post quote, be sure to leave the beginning and ending quote tags, as well as the opening and closing quotation marks ("post text quoted here..."). Everything in between is fair game and your reply should come out ok.

Only thing I have to add to this discussion is sometimes a single closing of the quote tag isn't enough... I usually toss in 3 < /quote> to start my post fixing the ongoing quote. Whatever is above & beyond needed to end the madness is just ignored by the rendering engine on the site.

andym: "If your not using vi to edit html files, get off my lawn!"

vim...get with the program :) :)

GeoFisher: "

andym: "If your not using vi to edit html files, get off my lawn!"

vim...get with the program :) :)
"

Kids these days with their newfangled toys.