Do not automatically include copy of 'Original Message' in replies

[Michael A. Lowry]

Broadcom's chosen platform for its community site is Higher Logic. Currently, when one replies to a thread, an entire copy of the message to which one is replying is appended automatically to the reply. There is no way for the user to disable this.  When a thread gets several levels deep, the quoted messages get longer and longer. This needlessly increases storage requirements for the community site.

It would be preferable if this feature were made optional or completely disabled. If someone wants to quote all or part of a prior message, he can do this using an ordinary blockquote element.

[Michael A. Lowry]

For context, when Broadcom deleted the majority of all user-submitted ideas in 2022, one of the justifications was that the ideas were taking up too much storage space in the database. I wonder how many duplicate messages are stored in the community DB just because automatic quoting of original messages is enabled by default.

[Jason McClellan]

Michael,  I'll have to look but since these messages are threaded and users can either comment on the main or initial posts then subsequent replies or answers I'm not sure if it can be disabled.     I don't see an issue with storage per se but loading times for longer threads.    We ran into this a while back when merging Symantec community tags, which brought us to over 60k, so adding a tag was painful.   I'll check and admin to see if this can be toggled to the user or another option.   Thx  ~jm

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Thank you
Jason
Broadcom Community Platform Admin, IT
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[Michael A. Lowry]

This feature does not appear to be connected to threading. When one replies, the message to which one is replying is copied as text into the bottom of the posted reply. It's a complete copy in the new message, not a reference to the original.

Messages are already threaded, so if you want to see the content of the previous/original message, all you have to do is scroll up.

And if you want to cite a specific passage from a message, you can do this using a block quote:

Michael,  I'll have to look...

The automatic embedding of the entire parent thread in each reply lacks any plausible utility. It litters threads with extraneous content, and results in unnecessary manifold duplication of data.