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There does seem to be a need for better methods of quoting. I've seen people quote text with code blocks that look absolutely abysmal on mobile.

Most people seem to end up doing it 4chan style, sans the highlighting 4chan provides.

Other than that though, yea- HN isn't in dire need of changes. There are alternative frontends if you want them, though. I like the chronological fixation of http://hckrnews.com

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Quoting with a greater than sign, which is what I infer you are talking about, pre-dates 4chan by years. It was used on Usenet long before 4chan even existed.

Eric S. Raymond blamed it on an attempt to simulate having tabstops in every column, i.e. 1 character wide tabs.

* http://catb.org/jargon/html/email-style.html

Certainly. But I think the gp is referring to the idea of putting a single greater-than sign at the beginning of a long, soft-wrapped paragraph. 4chan (and other sites) would highlight the whole paragraph, but on HN if it is very long it isn't immediately obvious that it's a quote. Hard-wrapping the quote and putting a greater-than sign in front of each line, as in email or Usenet is much clearer than the style typically used on HN.

That sort of quoting long pre-dates 4chan, too. It's the Fidonet convention for paragraphing.

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