DiMono
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1181
Registered: 09-13-2003
IP: Logged

I think it would be a good idea if in addition to the Quote link on a post, there was a Reply to This Post link. Then the text field could be automatically populated with something like

In reply to DiMono, post #1

This would be a very fast way to make it easy to tell who you're replying to, when the thread has been very active and you might not be replying to the immediately previous post.

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Deploy the... I think it's a yellow button... it's usually flashing... it makes the engines go... WHOOSH!

Fafnir
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 315
Registered: 11-05-2004
IP: Logged

Sounds good to me - I'm guessing you'd just have to take the existing quote code and add a segment to check the topic to find out who's post you're quoting, and if they've made any other posts in the thread (and if so how many). User names beside posts seem to have a constant pattern in the HTML, so they should be easy to identify.

Maybe you could even make the "In reply to..." section customisable from people's profiles, although I realise that may be quite a bit more work.

The only disadvantage I can think of is that in long threads (think of something like the Three Word Story or the post prediction thread), it may take a while to grep the previous posts.

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Stupidity kills.
Absolute stupidity
Kills absolutely.

DiMono
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1181
Registered: 09-13-2003
IP: Logged

Well, you wouldn't need to know how many other times the person has posted. I'm not talking about in reply to Fafnir's 7th post, I mean in reply to Fafnir, #178 as in the 178th post in the thread. May even only need to be how many posts back it was from your reply.

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Deploy the... I think it's a yellow button... it's usually flashing... it makes the engines go... WHOOSH!