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Posted by Jose on 01/24/06 20:48
> So you just pick a random post from a thread and press reply?
Well, in the rare cases when I do this, the post I pick to "reply" to
may not be random, but it is (as far as my reply goes) equivalent to
many others in the thread.
> ..he/she will read "Re:" in the subject, and wonder what you are
> replying to..
.... and just after the "Re:" is the subject. It's a clue. Granted
topic drift sometimes makes the subject line irrelevant, but anybody
still reading probably knows this. New readers may have to go back a
message or two... if the message is that far off the subject, a single
quote isn't going to help much. The alternative (which I see far too
often on Usenet) is that huge amounts of thread get copied for each
reply, which then gets copied into subsequent replies... and far more
time is wasted paging through all that redundancy to find the new stuff
than would be wasted on the occasional having to refer back to a post
that probably still exists on the server, or will arrive soon.
> I don't feel that's good enough an excuse really.
Excuse? It's not like anybody's trying to "get away with something".
> If it's a reply to the gestalt (I don't like that
> word btw) of an entire conversation, write whatever you feel is the
> gestalt (others might have different ideas) between square brackets
> above your reply, like so:
>
> [sharks]
> They bite.
Good idea. Sometimes I do do that. However, rather than:
* > [sharks]
* They bite.
I might write
* Sharks bite.
> Example: the post you made to which Mark replied that you aren't
> quoting still.
Actually, I didn't write that post. And in this thread I did quote and
respond "appropriately". So much for internet style.
My point was =not= that quoting and replying to the quote should be
deprecated, but rather, that =sometimes= it is not necessary.
I did not express an opinion as to which category any particular post
falls in.
Jose
--
Money: what you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.
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