Re: Hanging perl

[Rob Funk]

OK, I've tried to stay quiet about the excessive quoting and top-posting
(especially since the primary software developer is a primary offender),
but this is getting ridiculous. Do we really need to see that entire call
graph reposted for every "Hanging perl" post?

Those messages have so much quoted material that the last two digests had
only two messages each, with only about half a dozen (or less!) lines of
actual content in each message. (The mail system sends out a digest
either once a day or when the collected size of messages reaches a certain
threshold.)

--
==============================| "A slice of life isn't the whole cake
Rob Funk <rfunk (AT) funknet (DOT) net> | One tooth will never make a full grin"
http://www.funknet.net/rfunk | -- Chris Mars, "Stuck in Rewind"

[Roy M. Silvernail]

On Monday 10 November 2003 00:16, Rob Funk wrote:
> OK, I've tried to stay quiet about the excessive quoting and top-posting
> (especially since the primary software developer is a primary offender),
> but this is getting ridiculous. Do we really need to see that entire call
> graph reposted for every "Hanging perl" post?

+1

Once upon a time, newsreaders wouldn't let you post an item unless the ratio
of new text to quoted text was > 1:1. That was, perhaps, extreme, but
certainly the full text of a thread need not be quoted with every reply. Top
posting is annoying at best. It pretty much requires one to read the whole of
the quoted material and infer what the reply is referring to.

A quick scan of the Mailman docs doesn't show up an attachment policy, but if
allowed, logfiles and such should be sent as attachments. That would prevent
them from being quoted by default. Top posting is a habit that each user will
have to break on his/her own, but it's a habit well worth breaking. (it's
unfortunate that mail clients such as Outlook and Lotus Notes by default
format inclusions in a way that encourages top posting)

These issues affect archiving as well. Excessive quoting means searching the
archives will yield more false hits. A little attention to detail up front
will make the lists more useful now and in the future.

A Public Service Announcement from the Coalition for Readable and Archivable
Postings, which thanks you for your support. :)