I don't understand your answer at all. You say it's trying to "fix miscreant the quote character ':' back into a '>'". I don't know what "fix miscreant" means, but I do know that ":" and ">" aren't quote characters so I'm having trouble figuring out (...) (25 years ago, 26-Jul-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
(...) By "quote character" here I mean news-quoting rather than English text quoting. The two paragraphs above this one that I'm writing are "quoted" paragraphs from your message. The word "quoted" is in English quotes. Sorry about the ambiguity. (...) (25 years ago, 26-Jul-99, to lugnet.admin.general, lugnet.publish)