Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 14:47:38 08/11/99
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On August 11, 1999 at 10:01:13, Ratko V Tomic wrote: >It seems that a reply style has evolved on CCC >where folks quote pages of earlier messages in >order to add a sentence or two at the bottom, >such as "Good point," or some such. > >Since we're dealing here with HTML documents, >i.e. the hypertext, where link already exists >into the previous message, there is no reason >to quote almost anything, much less to quote >the entire messages (which themselves may be >several levels of quoted entire messages). The >only reason one may quote a brief segment would >be to indicate to which item from the earlier >post one is responding. A short fragment identifying >such place ought to be enough. I am going to include your whole post, because I am going to respond to several points, and your post is information dense. When this place was very new, there was a discussion about quoting, and I argued against quoting, since you could simply go back and see the original. This is in contrast with usenet, where the original may be gone already, or may not have arrived. However, I was wrong. It takes too long to use "back" and click on the preceding post, which may already be gone, or at least not visible, if it was posted a while ago. But you are right that people should snip more. >The message processing script could even strip off >the quoted items and convert them into a targetted >link which brings up the place in the earlier message >to which the resonse is directed. It would take too long to load and it would give people headaches. >Another helpful step would be to post the guidelines, >with a brief reminder about the most frequent >bad habits at the top of the posting form. > >Even better step would be to remove entirely the >"Post with quoting" option, which stimulates >the wasteful and unhelpful re-copying. That kind >of option may have been useful on some old usenet >access system, where looking at the past messages >would require a much larger effort than clicking >the mouse at the link. In the present situation, by >virtue of promoting the endless re-re-re... quoting, >it only wastes time of the readers while browsing, >as well as the space and the download time of the >archives. Post-with-quoting is essential. bruce
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