Re: My Very Strange Webhost, SBI! -- Opinions, Please

Lasse Reichstein Nielsen <lrn (AT) hotpop (DOT) com> wrote

Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_war (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote

I'm really sorry, Jonathan, but I can't follow your logic at all...because
someone's news server may not have stored previous posts, I should trim .sigs????

No (well, I can't speak for Jonathan, but if you ask me ...)

The Usenet has a long history, and during that history
some rules on how to post most effectively have evolved.

They are nothing like rules in the sense that you are claiming.

A quick summary on how to quote would be:

- Quote sufficiently much to give context to your reply,
so that it is readable on its own, but not more.

And that particular approach doesnt make sense anymore.

And you lost too much of the context so that this post no longer contains the context.

- Reply below the quoted parts that your reply to.

That was never a rule in the sense that you are claiming.

There are good reasons to reply at the top if you
are making a general comment on the entire post.

- Correctly attribute all your quotes.
- Do not quote signatures. (Which is also why you should
correctly delimiter your signature, using a "-- " line)

It is often recommended that a signature is no more than 4 lines
of 72 characters, but this is not a strict rule, only a guideline.

None of the others are anything like a strict rule either.

Some of these rules might initially have been created to save bandwidth,

So no longer make any sense and so can be discarded.

Its more useful to maintain the entire context now than it is to minimise the use of bandwidth.

but they also makes it possible to enter a thread at any point and
make some sense of it, and makes reading a message easier.

Its better to not trim now for that reason.

For a medium where there can be thousands of readers
of each message, spending a little more time to make a
message readable is better than having a thousand readers
spend two more minutes on understanding what is written.

And few bother to clean up the quoting even tho that would make sense for that reason.

"Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa (AT) gmail (DOT) com> writes:

Lasse Reichstein Nielsen <lrn (AT) hotpop (DOT) com> wrote
For a medium where there can be thousands of readers
of each message, spending a little more time to make a
message readable is better than having a thousand readers
spend two more minutes on understanding what is written.

And few bother to clean up the quoting even tho that
would make sense for that reason.

...and that's how you spot clever, thoughtful posters.

A.

ad (AT) remove (DOT) this.and.keep.w....ionicsoft.com (Arnaud Diederen
(aundro)) writes:

"Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa (AT) gmail (DOT) com> writes:

Lasse Reichstein Nielsen <lrn (AT) hotpop (DOT) com> wrote
For a medium where there can be thousands of readers
of each message, spending a little more time to make a
message readable is better than having a thousand readers
spend two more minutes on understanding what is written.

And few bother to clean up the quoting even tho that
would make sense for that reason.

..and that's how you spot clever, thoughtful posters.

[and now people have one more hint about my mother
tongue not being english]

I meant 'contributor', not 'poster'.
A.

A.

On May 26, 1:55 am, "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Lasse Reichstein Nielsen <l... (AT) hotpop (DOT) com> wrote

Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_... (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote
I'm really sorry, Jonathan, but I can't follow your logic at all...because
someone's news server may not have stored previous posts, I should trim .sigs????
No (well, I can't speak for Jonathan, but if you ask me ...)
The Usenet has a long history, and during that history
some rules on how to post most effectively have evolved.

They are nothing like rules in the sense that you are claiming.

Well, yes they are. They are rules of effective communication. I do
not even read posts that aren't written using the "rules" that Lasse
speaks of. I suspect there are many like me. All of us are inundated
with information. This is a different kind of bandwidth, one in which
humans, not machines, are overloaded. In fact, I would take an
educated guess that the rules spring, not from computer science, but
from writers who were trying to come up with a way to guide non-
writers into getting their point(s) across.

Bob Gulian