Combined Posts

[Oversphere]

I just made two posts back to back in a political thread. I made two separate posts for the sake of readability, and because I was addressing two separate individuals. The software combined them, and now it's a bit unclear what I said to which individual. That's a stupid feature. I can decide how to arrange my posts.

[Jezebel]

This is to keep the thread pages shorter, reduce database size (double posting is very common and each post takes a whole new database entry), and so members do not have to continuously read multiple posts in a row made by the same members.

The feature is staying. However, I would be willing to provide more definition between the merged posts.

[Oversphere]

Though they are annoying, double posts do not alter the meaning of a post or significantly alter a discussion. Combined posts can. The ambiguity caused by my combined posts is slight, so it probably won't cause a problem. The apparent meaning of the posts could have been significantly changed if they had been arranged differently. Personally, I prefer function over form, at least in a website.

[Jezebel]

Sorry, keeping or removing this feature is not up for debate. Thank you for sharing your opinion though. I will consider ways to provide more definition between merged posts.

[Oversphere]

If you don't want debate, delete my posts. You know best.

[Jezebel]

If you don't want debate, delete my posts. You know best.
This isn't necessary. Feedback about whether or not certain features are "user-friendly" is welcome, it's just the arguing about the ways to implement them that isn't. Seriously though, I'll look into making improvements to this feature. :)

[rocksteady]

provide more definition between the merged posts.

Might be a good idea, maybe different background color or something?

and oversphere, it's not that annoying, once you learn to use it just format your posts accordingly.

[Oversphere]

Might be a good idea, maybe different background color or something?

and oversphere, it's not that annoying, once you learn to use it just format your posts accordingly.

Maybe I should experiment by changing the time interval between posts until I determine the amount of time that must elapse before the software chooses to allow the posts to remain separate. It's not a matter of learning to use a format, it's a matter of (apparently) inconsistent results from the same procedure. Until that combined post, each post I entered always resulted in exactly one post being displayed.

[Ijz]

I just made two posts back to back in a political thread. I made two separate posts for the sake of readability, and because I was addressing two separate individuals. The software combined them, and now it's a bit unclear what I said to which individual. That's a stupid feature. I can decide how to arrange my posts.
I don't see your point. For every quote you made a reply upon, the name of the user is clearly visible in the quote. Of course, like Jezebel said, extra distinction could be an improvement.

Also, when we are discussing automatic merging anyway, I would suggest formatting the time between posts in days/hours/minutes rather than just minutes.

[Jezebel]

If you care that much and you know that you are going to make two posts in a row anyway, just make them in the same post in the first place or edit the 2nd post into the first yourself. You can add your own formatting to separate them.

I would suggest formatting the time between posts in days/hours/minutes rather than just minutes.
It's on a timer. It only lasts a few hours anyway.

[Ijz]

It's on a timer. It only lasts a few hours anyway.

Right, I see. Its just that I saw a post which mentioned something like "231 minutes ago" and it didn't strike me as very intuituive. I really had to do the math in my head to figure out it was about 4 hours ago.

[Jezebel]

While I see your point, changing that is beyond my technical know-how.

[Jezebel]

Made some formatting changes to make the merge text look different from normal post text. It looks like this:

* * * Jezebel added to this post, 0 minutes and 9 seconds later... * * *

This is the 2nd post.