[Ansteorra] Lenght of digests

Tim McDaniel tmcd at panix.com
Tue Jan 19 14:09:31 PST 2010


On Tue, 19 Jan 2010, Jennifer Smith <jds at randomgang.com> wrote:
> The length of the digest is purely tied to how many messages were
> sent in a given day.

Um, surely the SIZE of each message has something to do with it?

One instance: I notice a lot of people doing "top posting".
They reply to a message, putting their reply at the top, and leaving
the message that they're replying to verbatim at the bottom.  Then
someone replies-to-reply, then reply-to-reply-to-reply, ...

In a chain of N such replies, the original message gets posted N times
often with an increasing number of ">"s.  Often, a reply has enough
information to stand alone, in which case the previous message is
useless (since this list has publicly-available archives for
reference).

I don't get the digest form, but unless the mailer has been programmed
to avoid it, a lot of those readers' time is spent scrolling down thru
message after message that's been repeated before.

And the ending looks like

...
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Ansteorra mailing list
>>> Ansteorra at lists.ansteorra.org
>>> In order to make changes and manage your account please go to:
>>> http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/ansteorra-ansteorra.org
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ansteorra mailing list
>> Ansteorra at lists.ansteorra.org
>> In order to make changes and manage your account please go to:
>> http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/ansteorra-ansteorra.org
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Ansteorra mailing list
> Ansteorra at lists.ansteorra.org
> In order to make changes and manage your account please go to:
> http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/ansteorra-ansteorra.org
>

More than one copy of that is utterly useless.


I suggest, instead, that repliers trim out all text except what is
needed to establish the context of their reply, or even just
paraphrase it.  Then reply with new text.  Even better, if your reply
can stand alone, don't quote.

I think "bottom posting" is better -- putting the reply after the
original text -- because people read top-down, and for other reasons
summarized at <http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html>.

Danet de Linccolne
-- 
Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com



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