Netiquette Nazi...

[Erikus4@aol.com]

Considering the previous thread we had on "netiquette," I'd like to share my 
own disgust with the list.

Can some of you people please quote ONLY the relevant parts of the post which 
you are addressing?  As my own general guideline, I think a quote should be, 
at the VERY most, twice as big as the reply.  Generally, the quote should be 
smaller than the reply.

This may not be such a problem on Vision2020, but on many parts of the 
Internet, people pay access charges for their phone time.  When the post is 
two lines and the quote is several hundred, that increases the detriment to 
those parties.  To the rest of us it just looks like you're a lazy slob who 
doesn't care to take the time to edit his post.

Additionally, the wonderful, new words of wisdom contributed by the post can 
easily get lost in all that quoted material.  Usually a quote is indicated by 
some character, like ">," but I've seen several styles of quoting that do 
NOTHING to help the reader determine where original thought and default 
computer vomit diverge.

And for best results, the quote should be placed BEFORE the additional, 
wonderful thoughts which your post provides.  If the quote is to serve as an 
indication of what the actual post is about, it generally should come before 
the new thought, in my opinion.  I don't know that there is any general 
"netiquette" quideline for this, but this is what I think makes sense.

And, some of you seem to have HTML crud coming along with your messages.  
Certain e-mail programs will send this junk along with the e-mail.  In many 
cases it is MANY times longer than the regular material.  I can read most 
HTML, but I'm guessing most people can't and wonder what the hell the poster 
is doing...  I will do my part and send private e-mail to these people and 
assist them in correcting this if they need to.

I often hear people mention a signal to noise ratio in reference to computer 
communication.  I don't know that I understand it correctly, but it seems to 
me the noise on our little list could be reduced tremendously.  (And I just 
noted that the archive of messages includes ALL of this extraneous garbage.  
Doesn't First Step donate all this to us?  Shouldn't we be a bit nicer to 
them?  Maybe?)

Thanks for at least listening.

E. O'Daniel

We may not imagine how our lives could be more
frustrating and complex - but Congress can. 
- - Cullen Hightower