Long quotes and repeated messages

Harry Fluks H.W.Fluks at research.ptt.nl
Fri Mar 4 12:34:55 CET 1994


Don:
> I get to feeling pretty silly
> myself when I see there's a long Digest to read and find out that most
> of it is someone who must reprint one of MY own long messages, word for
> word, before he can reply to it, rather than just making a reference to
> my earlier post -- and I find I'm paying to read my own words.

Well, here are some of your own words again. I usually quote just enough
of a previous message so that a reader can understand my reply without
having to dig up the original message. Most of the members of this list
do not receive the messages in digests, so when they read it they don't
have the previous messages nearby.

I agree with you that the quotes shouldn't be too long - an Internet rule is
to let a message have at least as much new material as quotes.

And I also agree that we don't need all those introducktions repeatedly in
the digests. Apart from some people paying by the character (apparently...)
we also have the problem of archiving: if Per wants to have all digests
available on an ftp archive, this can cost a lot of space with no extra
information. I myself also archive everything from this list (My archive is
about 3 1/2 floppy disks by now) and I always edit out the unnecessary
texts manually.

Maybe we can define some way to send a message to the list, but NOT to the
digests? There is some point in re-sending old messages (new members keep
asking for old information) but the few people that PAY for their messages
shouldn't be bothered with it. Mattias could send NEW introducktions to the
digest, and ALL introducktions to the rest of the list.

Maybe Per can work something out, like a special tag on the subject line?


--Harry.



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