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I'm looking to convey the following functionality to users: able to take part or all of an existing short text entry and make a new, related text entry from it.

For example, if a user encounters the comment: "I like cold soup because it is so refreshing on a hot summer day," we offer the user the ability to take part or all of that quoted text and make a new, related question out of it (e.g. create a question for the community to discuss "Is cold soup refreshing on a hot summer day?")

Absurd example, but I hope it conveys what I'm getting at.

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Wow, great challenge. How much space do you have to work with? – drawtheweb Jan 23 at 17:40
Trying to convey the idea in something sized like an icon, drawtheweb – Mark Gavagan Jan 23 at 19:44
This appears to be descending into a poll of icon suggestions rather than an answer to the question. Icon requests themselves are off-topic here for this reason (none of the answers below specifically answer the question, they're all just suggestions that people end up voting on their favourite). It was recently discussed on Meta about whether these questions should be made more valid, but I'm not sure this particular question is a good fit. – JonW♦ Jan 24 at 6:54

closed as not constructive by JonW♦ Jan 24 at 7:43

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5 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

Hm, interesting... maybe "remix", "refresh", "fork", "split", or "post"?

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enter image description here (icon for a Dribbble "rebound")

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2  
I actually think the 'fork' icon to be viable in this context. – drawtheweb Jan 23 at 21:31
1  
+1 for fork that is the only one out of those examples that seems relevant to me. Plus, it is exactly what the use case described above is doing. – Charles Wesley Jan 23 at 22:16
up vote 3 down vote

Focussing on a single component of a multi-part object might be the visualization you're looking for. This is rough:

enter image description here

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up vote 1 down vote

Certainly nothing "widely-understood". If you need to have a symbol know that people won't understanding it initially but can learn it.

Perhaps something pseudo mathematical like

      ≈>

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Terrific point about users learning. Gracias. -Mark – Mark Gavagan Jan 24 at 13:30
up vote 0 down vote

You could explore a torn away piece of paper

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Is this a widely-understood visual metaphor? How does this relate to the particular situation the OP has described? Can you expand on this answer, give some reasoning (and possibly examples of where this is used) to support the idea that it is widely-understood. – JonW♦ Jan 24 at 6:15
no I can't be bothered – Go Fuckyourself Jan 25 at 0:19
up vote -1 down vote

How about something like the rough drill icons here, as in "drilling down" into the topic?

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Or

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Or

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And one more I found on a web search:

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Last image found on http://sketchybiz.blogspot.com/2007/07/drilling-down-to-ordinary-level.html and probably owned by them

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