Christina WarrenI miss quote tweeting the most. I rarely abused it and I think the argument it was primarily used for abuse both devalues the real value of why USERS invented the quote tweet to begin with and gives too much power to the so-called abuse that could be better solved with better abuse/block tools.
Paul Haddad 
@film_girl I really miss it too, I've tried to adapt to it, I really have but still miss it.
@paul users invented the RT/QT for a reason, you know?
Scott Perry@film_girl @paul I feel like sufficiently advanced link previews in the client could bridge a lot of this gap, even allowing "quoting" from off-network
@numist @film_girl honestly at that point its just playing silly games, hydrate the Post and add a option to Quote from the Boost button and call it a day.
At this point the only reason I haven't done it is because I have concerns of how to do it without causing a height changing timeline, which I try to avoid as much as possible.
@paul @film_girl Totally, but I'd argue silly games are good; they're how these things become real—like how Twinkle caused location tagging to become part of Twitter.
wrt height-changing do you mean because the cells would load previews asynchronously? Definitely seems like care would be needed to avoid weird scroll offset woe.
@numist @film_girl yes Twitter had an API that allowed you to load up to 100 Tweets at a time, that'd be really good for something like this as we could hydrate the Posts at load time and base layout, etc.. on that.
Here you can only load one post at a time by ID, which makes that kind of technique very problematic. What if there's 20 quotes in your timeline.
@paul @film_girl Oof, yeah. I guess you could add posts to the visible timeline as they become data-complete (batched into some time quanta) but even that is going to require thoughtful code—suddenly the silly game has gotten serious
@numist add to that, hey guess what there's no way to really 100% tell if a link is an actual link to a post or a link that just has a similar format.
@paul Well, previews don't have to be restricted to toots, as long as you can determine whether there are social card tags in the head then you're good (quote-tooting a tweet being the most obviously useful possibility).
Unless the site is too slow but in the incremental model you'd need heuristics on when to give up on a preview regardless.
@numist doing something like that, a direct request to the site, is problematic from the privacy standpoint. Right now everything goes from the client to the server and nowhere else (I mean obviously unless you tap on a link and open it SFVC).
@paul Yeah, appropriately enough it's also a thundering herd problem. CDNs solve this problem for static assets, feels like there's an opportunity for a preview caching service. Hmmmm…
Steve Lhomme@paul @numist @film_girl the way @icecubesapp does it seems to work well. At least when viewed inside Ice Cubes. They look OK in Ivory too. Can't there be Metadata attached to a toot that you could add and says it's a quote based on another toot.
Lydia@numist @film_girl @paul Agree, the ability to preview another website’s/new articles’s headline and lede instead of a url is really valuable and something I miss about bird site.
keeps vis.social running@film_girl @paul If this was twitter, I'd probably QT this post and say something like...'mastodon avoided QT for reasons'...maybe address those reasons and stop trying to recreate twitter. It really was horrible.
We have an opportunity to rethink all of that, here, now. And build something so much better, together.
@kristinHenry @paul I mean, Twitter didn’t adopt it as a feature until 2012 or so. It was invented by users and then third-party apps to give additional context, nuance, detail, or to amplify in a way that wouldn’t get scrolled through. And yes, to dunk on people. Which still happens even without the feature.
@film_girl @paul 2012 was 11 years ago! Why should mastodon jump to support it after just a few months of migrations?
You can still do a QT here, you just have to go through the step of getting the link to the post you want to comment on.
The tech isn't the problem.
@kristinHenry @paul I don’t really care if Mastodon officially supports it or not. I just want an easier way to link to a post in the clients I use and to view the content without having to click or tap on something else. Quote tweets are just another interface for reblogging, something nearly every social network (inclusion Mastodon) has done for 15 years. The QRT button was introduced in 2015 but largely used before that and better displayed in third-party clients.
Pseudo Nym@kristinHenry @film_girl @paul The primary value I see in quote-posts, is the ability to add commentary/context. If I really need to, I can "copy link" and paste it.
Like this:
https://mastodon.social/@film_girl/109759044241043089
So I get the primary value, commentary, for two addition taps.
But while I see the utility, I agree with the current Mastodon way, that twitter-style quote-tooting, on balance, is a net negative.
Engage and reply to the original poster is better.
Uli Kusterer (Not a kitteh)@paul @film_girl I kinda like an idea I saw a while ago, that we should replace QTs with a RT of the original with a specific reply in-line below it.
That'd give the original post more prominence and would hopefully encourage people to read the original neutrally *before* they see the reply of the re-poster.
Jesse@uliwitness @paul @film_girl I like this too, though there are some downsides as noted by @hildabast in this convo https://mastodon.social/@misc/109677887701292864
Mike Cohen
Keith Wilson@uliwitness @paul @film_girl Here’s a proposal for a #QuoteReply (or Boost-and-Reply) function: https://fediphilosophy.org/@keithwilson/109456249890156614.
This avoids some of the worst aspects of QTs while remaining compatible with the existing Mastodon API since you can already boost a reply along with the original toot. All that’s needed from clients is to display both together in the timeline (which @elk already does) and a way to boost-and-reply to a toot as a single action; e.g. via a long press on the ‘boost’ button. Bingo!
Keith Wilson (@[email protected])
The negative aspects of #QuoteTweets could be fixed by making them work more like replies. A #QuoteReply, if you will. Instead of appearing as a new toot unconnected with the original, the original toot would be boosted with a comment added that is shown both to followers and, crucially, the original poster. Subsequent replies would then go to both in the usual way so that the conversation is not forked. (The same should also happen with regular boosts IMO.) #Mastodon #UX #QuoteToot #noxp
David Rolfe@paul Using this process would maybe fix the timeline height issue too, because you'd be requesting the real original and the boosted-reply and aligning them on the client.
@paul @film_girl So I actually kind of appreciate the adaptation, personally. I think that extra bit of friction forces just a little more thoughtfulness. Still in favor of allowing them, but there's something to be said for limitations. Even this comment would have been better had it been capped at 140 characters.
ilyess@paul @film_girl It looks like it’s under consideration: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/109623891328707089
Chris Morrell@paul @film_girl I’ve been messing with a userland alternative using open graph/oEmbed tags. Real QT’s would be better, but it’s something.
I’m still messing with the right tag combo to make it render best across the most clients. Looks great in ivory, but not everywhere else.
https://qt.any.dev/https://mastodon.social/@film_girl/109759044241043089
Post by Christina Warren
Yales@paul I think a potential client-side solution for now would be to render links to other posts as one would have rendered a quote post. Current link preview to other Mastodon posts isn’t great.
And add a button that composes a new post with the link already added.
Edit: oops just saw this has already been suggested