Re: Second Normal Form help.

This is obviously religious issue, of which I want no part. I am, however, posting from my linux box, in netscape, purely for your benefit.

Lorrin (filter the spam to reply)

James Taylor wrote:
>
> In article <dMny6.7777$mA.2397836_at_newsrump.sjc.telocity.net>,
> Lorrin Moore wrote:
> >
> > Unless you are responding point by point to a message, or the original
> > quoted material fits within a few lines in a news reader, there is no
> > reason to "top quote".
>
> I strongly disagree. What you do not seem to be taking into account,
> is that it is not possible to read a thread from beginning to end in
> one sitting. For instance, I will read as much of a group as I have
> time for, then hit the "catch up" button. The next time I download
> news may be two or three days later, and given that I read around
> fifty groups, it is not possible to remember what was being said in
> every thread anyway. When someone such as yourself fails to quote a
> preceding snippet to put things in context I find it difficult to make
> sense of what is being said.
>
> > Regular readers have already read the thread
> > and don't need to re-read it to understand your contribution.
>
> Context is useful even to a regular reader. Obviously it is good
> form to trim down what is being quoted to the minimum necessary to
> give enough context, but you're not arguing for that because if you
> were you wouldn't leave the entire quoted message at the bottom of
> your posting.
>
> I have noticed that people who post in reverse order are nearly always
> Outlook Express users and I have to assume that there is some user
> interface flaw in Outlook which makes them do this. On the other hand
> it may simply be that the typical Outlook user is also a Usenet
> neophyte who does not understand the long standing culture that has
> developed for the benefit of everyone. Such neophytes probably believe
> that a one-off minor inconvenience for them when they write a message
> outweighs the multiple inconveniences of everyone else who reads the
> message. My suggestion is that such neophytes learn some humility and
> attempt to fit in with the culture they are trying to be a part of.
>
> In article <Whby6.7144$mA.2120275_at_newsrump.sjc.telocity.net>,
> Lorrin Moore wrote:
> >
> > So I don't have to scroll all the way to the damned bottom just to
> > read your inane response.
>
> This is another problem I've noticed. Some neophytes who do not
> understand the reasons for the Usenet culture of interleaved quoting,
> but who nevertheless know that they are supposed to reply *after* what
> is said so that it reads forwards rather than backwards, seem to think
> that it is enough to simply place their reply at the bottom without
> trimming the quoted material at all. The result, as you quite rightly
> complain, is that you are simply scrolling to the bottom of a large wad
> of text in order to read the new material. What you need to understand
> is that the quoted text should be trimmed down to the essential points
> you are answering and the replies interleaved between.
>
> Another thing you should recognise is that Usenet is archived for
> research purposes and if your postings do not make sense because they
> are written in a backwards quoting order, this makes life difficult
> for anyone wishing to mine Usenet for information. When you add to
> this the bloat caused by unthinking regurgitation of the entire
> untrimmed message again and again in accumulation as a conversation
> progresses, then you can see how it damages the ability of searchable
> archives to store and retrieve the relevant articles.
>
> Usenet has worked well in these ways for as long as I've been using it
> (around ten years). For Outlook users to come along recently and spoil
> it in the way they do, is quite wrong. They should be more socially
> conscious and stop behaving like mindless playground bullies.
>
> --
> James Taylor <james (at) oakseed demon co uk>
> Based in Hammersmith, London, UK.
> PGP key available ID: 3FBE1BF9
> Fingerprint: F19D803624ED6FE8 370045159F66FD02
Received on Wed Apr 04 2001 - 06:32:37 CEST