[TriLUG] Rant: Please trim responses

[Paul D. Boyle]

John Matthews wrote:
> On Wed, 2002-03-20 at 09:36, Mike Johnson wrote:
> > Could you do us all a favor and trim your responses?  Include the
> > relavant bits that you're responding to, but there's no need to quote
> > the previous message, and the message previous to that, and the
> > message previous to that, all the way back to the beginning of the
> > thread.
> 
> Mike, I'm with you. However, I've had this discussion with my wife

[snip]

> *most* of the information in the replies was useless lines from previous
> mails in the thread. She says my attitude is elitist, and has nothing to
> do with clear, concise communication as I've tried to portray it.

I know a lot people who have this attitude.  This trimming of material to
include only relevant context is an old, established USENET and mailing
list practice.  For example from RFC 1855 (the Netiquette RFC):

  If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you summarize
  the original at the top of the message, or include just enough text of
  the original to give a context. This will make sure readers understand
  when they start to read your response. Since NetNews, especially, is
  proliferated by distributing the postings from one host to another, it is
  possible to see a response to a message before seeing the original. Giving
  context helps everyone. But do not include the entire original!

This RFC, while not an official Internet standard, does distill the wisdom
of many years of experience on USENET and mailing lists.  I think there
is something to be gained to learning from others who have a high level
of experience with the medium.  To accuse that attitude of being "elitist"
seems, at best, uninformed.

Paul

-- 
Paul D. Boyle			    |	boyle at laue.chem.ncsu.edu
Director, X-ray Structural Facility |	phone: (919) 515-7362
Department of Chemistry - Box 8204  |	FAX:   (919) 515-5079
North Carolina State University     | 
Raleigh, NC, 27695-8204
http://laue.chem.ncsu.edu/web/xray.welcome.html