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Top-level
 This is less a question of behavior or functionality (“here’s how i use quote posts”) and entirely about semantics (“the nature of the relationship between my post and the quoted post is…”) To use replies as an example: the functionality of replies is that you want to link your post to on or more posts in a series. But the semantics of replies is that you are specifically responding to the thing you are linking; the “link relationship” between “your post” and “their post” is “reply/response to” 5 comments
@tom this is something mastodon wants to do (quote above/first, content below/second) and i agree it’s ergonomically better semantically it sounds like you’re saying there’s not much to it, it is primarily just a generic link that happens to come with an embedded preview. but there is also the “about” thing. how would you refine this statement? is it sometimes/generally/always commentary? citation? something else?  @trwnh I don't think there's any one answer to this One of the most common use cases is commentary or response, a "loud reply" as @erincandescent put it. I think most of the hostile uses of quote posting fall into this category (which is not to say it's always or even usually hostile) But also sometimes it's just to add emphasis, explanation, or even just personalization to a "boost." i.e., to share something with an explanation of why you're sharing @tom @erincandescent so is it always a response, or only sometimes? is emphasis/explanation a type of response?  @trwnh been pondering this. I think the cleanest relationship I've been able to come up with is that a quote post recontextualizes the original post. it removes it from its original context and places it in a new context. |
Gregory's Server
@trwnh I would say the "the post being quoted" is embedded content within the "quote post", exactly like media or a link preview.
In all of those examples, the post is usually presumed to be "about" the content it's referencing. "Check this image/link/post out. here's what I've got to say about it."
Which makes it odd (to me) that the content being commented on is usually displayed below the text of the post. If I were designing from scratch I'd do the opposite.