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Quoting and Referencing Other Posts

When you want to respond to a specific sentence or claim rather than a whole post, you can quote it directly instead of retyping or paraphrasing it.

Copying a reference

Select the text you want to quote inside a post's body. A Copy Reference button will appear near your selection - click it to copy a special reference token to your clipboard.

Using it in your reply

Paste the copied token anywhere in your reply or response before posting. Once posted, it is automatically rendered as a quoted, clickable link back to the exact original text - readers can click it to jump straight to the quoted post.

Why not just paste the text?

A reference always points back to the exact original post and character range, so it can't be used to misquote someone or take a comment out of context - the reader can always jump back and check it in place. This supports arguing in good faith; see Rules for civil debate.

Reference heat

Text that has been quoted often by other posts is highlighted more strongly in the original post - a quick visual cue for which parts of the discussion are drawing the most attention or disagreement.

Staying within the topic

References can only point to other posts within the same day's topic - you can't quote a post from an unrelated discussion.