A quote is a photograph. It keeps the words that were written, and it keeps them after the post they came from has been rewritten.
That is the right behaviour. A quote that silently followed its source would let anyone change what they had already been quoted saying, which is a worse problem than the one it solves.
But nobody is told. The reply underneath still reads as an answer to what is written up there today — and on a forum where threads decide things, that is how a discussion ends up arguing with a sentence that no longer exists.
Verbatim adds the missing half sentence.
The quoted words are untouched. The line under them says the post they came from has been edited since this reply was posted, and links to it as it stands now. Hovering gives the whole story: "These are the words that were written. The post they came from was edited 3 minutes ago, after this reply was posted."
What it claims, exactly
Only what two timestamps prove: the source post’s editedAt is after the quoting post’s createdAt.
Never "this quote is wrong". Nothing records which words were copied when, and somebody who fixes a typo in their own reply afterwards has not re-copied the quote. A quote of a post that was edited before the reply carries no marker at all — the quoter saw that edit.
How it works
Every quote made with the quote button already carries its source’s id: flarum/mentions renders it as a PostMention with a data-id. Verbatim reads that, looks the source up, and compares two dates. No new table, no settings, no migration — the PHP in this extension registers a stylesheet, a bundle and a locale, and nothing else.
Sources are fetched through core’s own posts endpoint, batched once per render, so a quote of a post you are not allowed to see is left alone rather than an endpoint of mine quietly confirming that it exists.
It works with the Markdown composer and with a WYSIWYG editor: both end up with the same mention in the rendered quote, which is the only thing this reads.
What it does not do
- It does not show what changed. Flarum core keeps no revision history — only that a post was edited, and when.
- It does not touch the quote. The words never move. That is the whole point.
Install
composer require ernestdefoe/verbatim
Enable it; there is nothing to configure.
