Is there a help article, FAQ or previous posts having a general recommendation regarding the proportional length of quoted content in an answer?
This is not about tags wikis having copy/pasted content from Wikipedia instead of tag usage guidelines, etc.
This is not either about posts not giving proper attribution.
This is about answers, including quotes that have proper attribution (or at least the author/community made an effort to do that), that proportionally have "too much" quoted content. I'm wondering how much might be too much, and if there might be some recommended tolerance for short answers, understanding that the quote doesn't require context other than the proper attribution and the provided by the question and site.
This question is in relation to several answers that I have seen mainly in Web Applications SE, the most recent beingthis answer to Use your Google Account to sign in to X. I liked this case in particular because it looks to combine having a good proportion of original content with a larger proportion of quoted content from external sources.
At first sight, it looks to me that the extent of the quoted content is too much. It looks to have quoted two articles, one quote looks very long in part because of the images, it includes around 10 short paragraphs. The second quote includes 5 short paragraphs.
Anyway, I'm not asking you to review this answer and each of the quotes. I'm asking for pointers to previous discussions, if any, about a general recommendation regarding the proportional length of quoted content in an answer. I know that How to reference material written by others (help article) does not include a limit regarding the proportion of the original content and the quoted content.
I think that usually should be encouraged to use textual quotes when the exact wording is relevant, but while the relevancy might vary depending on the question and the site scope/community I think that there might be general advice without entering too deep into the legal aspect about how much quoted text should be included in long answers. I imagine something like, the answer should contain at least 50% original content belonging to the answer author.
Some answers to technical questions, like those asking for help on fixing something, like code in Stack Overflow questions, might require to copy content from the question. I understand that in cases like this kind of recommendation doesn't apply.
An idea emerged from the comments
I think that it might be important to differentiate quoting paid content or any form of not generally available works including digital content requiring authentication or any form of access control vs. web content (publicly available like Wikipedia, major web applications help articles). On some sites or even by tags, it might be relevant both types of quoted content.
Related
- Quoting content from external sites - is this considered "fair use"?
- Do Stack Overflow answers require original content?
- Is copying documentation bad?