Mailing List Etiquette (was Re: cya)

[Jimen Ching]

On Fri, 26 Oct 2001, Eric Hattemer wrote:
>Hmm.  In general, I follow the practice of typing what I need to say on top.
>When I put my signature (as lame as it may be, it's still a signature), my
>message is done.  I then include any past posts below, so that if you know
>what I'm talking about anyway, you can ignore all of that, or if you don't,
>you can refresh your memory without looking at prior messages.

This does not work in technical discussions where the response may be very
long and there are multiple points to address.  In such cases, you need to
qoute like you are writing a report or a book.

	I.e. this is a qoute like in a book.  You indent it or mark it
	with a special character.

Otherwise, the reader has no idea which point you are trying to address.
At work, my co-workers always qoute the entire thread.  Their excuse is
that they were not included in the recipient list when the thread began.
So they want the _entire_ history of the thread so they can catch up.
You can all see the flaw in this communication mechanism.

Also, I blame most of these qouting habits on Outlook.  By default,
Outlook places the qouted text at the bottom.  Most people don't want to
bother editing it.  Bad habits assisted by bad software, what result can
we expect?

--jc
--
Jimen Ching (WH6BRR)      jching at flex.com     wh6brr at uhm.ampr.org