Thread:Hackey5/@comment-27022259-20161025021810/@comment-5645428-20161025065917

Mm, interesting to see we've had a few of these this week. Those features I've suppressed will always have been done so for what I would consider a valid reason, although not immediately obvious.
 * Prior to most of the current staff being recruited, while the quote button was enabled, it was heavily overused. Merely because it was there to use, people would quote what others had commented in previous replies, even if that reply was directly above their own. As frequently as this was occurring, then we had people quoting quotes, and then people quoting quotes of quotes. Thread length stacked up exponentially, also slowing load times, and for most topics of discussion, rarely formal, quoting would really not even be necessary to effectively explain a point. The feature itself was not removed either, one just needs to remember the syntax. Suppressing the quote button was done to improve the quality of thread viewing. With it returned, it will be comparatively frustrating having to tolerate its unnecessary usage.
 * Suppressing the MiniEditor buttons was done to discourage people from using it to add or upload images and videos as well as internal links, reducing maintenance work. Wikitext functionality was unchanged; bold and italic is universally called using Ctrl + B and Ctrl + I, and external links can be copy and pasted.

That's my reasoning. At this point, however, it matters less now that we're approaching the transition to Discussions, doing away with all of this in exchange for a new assortment of features anyway.