 |
 |
"Oh, it's him again, with another lecture," I hear you say. On Sunday 27 March Jo Ann Coen made a post to the list in reply to a post by Rayilynlee on 25 March. Jo Ann's post consisted of three lines of text. It was followed more than 500 lines of quotes from post we'd all read before several times, going back 10 days. Every day, those of us who choose to subscribe to the daily digest version of the list, have to trawl through this useless bulk. Must we really have all this repetition? Surely, what we are all after is new comment, fresh thoughts. No personal criticism is intended here, especially not to you Jo Ann, whose posts are always illuminating. Just a desire to tidy things up and hopefully make life easier for everyone. As in any society, the net only works because people agree to conform to a few conventions. It has become known as netiquette. I quote from the guidelines of a professional graphic arts list of which I am a member: "When replying to a message, include enough original material to be understood but no more. It is extremely bad form to simply reply to a message by including all the previous message: edit out all the irrelevant material." In fact, that list goes as far as automatically rejecting any post which quotes more than 24 lines of quoted reply. In our list , on occasion, there are 15 or more consecutive list instructions on how to sign off! (The list certainly makes it unusually easy for people to sign off, but that's another matter altogether). I have no intention of signing off, I think the list is interesting and valuable. And those who subscribe to it are good people who mean well and share a common end. But can we not discipline ourselves and when we press the reply button, do a little deleting? All the best to you all, David, aged 61, diagnosed 1999. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn