It is very much against the rules @Hackney_Builder. I have edited your quote edits and I suggest you not do this again.
What if I edit my own quotes? Am I the felon or the victim? (this was not a serious question, just a joke)
Ok, serious mode now. Is it allowed to change the formatting in quotes? Like, if I want to put emphasis to a passage, I just turn those few words in bold and maybe increase the size? I've done it a couple of times assuming it was legit, as I wasn't tampering with the meaning but just, again, putting emphasis on a particular passage. But now that the issue has been brought up, it might be a good idea to make sure (btw, I was not aware of this rule and I can't even find it here)
I guess it should be ok, since you aren't actually editing the contents. But eh, if there is a quote, there is always a original post anyway.
There is no rule that directly addresses this, but it falls under the common sense rule. If it is against the rules to impersonate another person by changing your name/nickname to something similar, why would it be allowed to take a quote and slap another user's name on it or completely change what a user said? This could also fall under the troll and harassment rules too. To answer your question, if you quote someone and bold some of the text, or change the color of it, I think this is ok as you are not altering the content to say something completely different than what the original poster intended. As far as I know, it's even ok to take a quote and remove some of it to only point out a few words or a sentence within the user's post. However, what was done here is, a quote was taken from a user and made to look like it came from andrewkm. Another quote was taking from a user and part of the original post was removed and replaced with something that user never posted. These are things that are against the rules.
Ok, good to know I didn't have the chance to read what was written in these fake quotes, but I guess in this particular case there was no real malicious intent, as the user explicitly declared he was gonna do experiments with quotes and there was no actual discussion on any topic (so no one's opinion could have been altered). But I agree that, in "real" threads, it's deceitful behavior at best. And I think that it should be explicitly stated in the rules. Disagreement on what constitutes "common sense" should not be allowed as an excuse, in any case (I've stated my skepticism on "generic" rules many times)
Please make a suggestion about adding quote altering to the rules if you feel the rules lack in that area. No there was nothing bad in the quotes removed, thus why they were just edited out with no punishment. However didn't want him to do it more and more and get forum banned or something. It's good to catch things early and put information out there.
