Rules about quoting others

**granuale** · April 5th, 2009, 06:05 PM

I'm confused about the rules regarding quoting others. In this post , Emptymag removed the part of Frenchy's post where he quoted and modified a quote. This type of post, where the poster says "I fixed that for you" and changes the quoted text happens all the time here, and has never to my knowledge been included in the misquoting rule prohibiting "manipulating someone's post in a quote to make it look like they said something they did not". In Frenchy's post and most all others which do this, the quote is modified with bold or color changes to the text precisely so everyone knows it wasn't made by the quoted poster and so that any frequent forum user knows the language was not in the original post.

Emptymag said he would not allow such a post in that particular thread, and thought it might have been against forum rules. I have two questions. 1. Does the site now enforce different rules for different threads? 2. Does posting as described and done in Frenchy's post violate a forum rule?

**Emptymag** · April 5th, 2009, 06:20 PM

Here's what happened.

I did not see any difference immediately, and since it was such a long post, in such a volatile thread, I deleted it for the sake of Soberbyker not having something misconstrued as something he did not say.

Frenchy clarified via PM that he HAD changed the text color... I did not see it. My error. I clarified it with him via PM.

It isn't the end of the world, and I don't think you have anything to fear as far as violating forum rules.

For the record. Don't "fix" any of MY posts. I don't like it. Period.
I'm an artist, and I liken it to someone altering one of my works without my permission.

If any other mods have anything to add, they may do so.

**danp** · April 5th, 2009, 07:09 PM

The guideline in place is to prevent people from altering the meaning or context of someone's post through devious quoting (or straight up altering.)

No guidelines are set in stone and almost everything we do is a judgment call.

There is no question that moderation of a thread related to the brutal murder of police officers will be moderated more closely than a thread containing pictures of cats.