Re: [ox-en] remarks on posting styles
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2008 12:09:25 +0200
Hi all!
@StefanMz: Thanks for this post. Unfortunately it were not overly
successful :-( .
Please let me emphasize it and also add some points.
Last month (38 days ago) Stefan Meretz wrote:
for me the long thread about "money" was really hard to follow, just by
the form of your posts you chose. Most of you are using Top-Posting or
Bottom-Posting or some bad variants of Inline Replying.
Well, from short scans of the latest mails I see I'll run into the
same problem when I now try to catch up with the latest threads here.
That's really bad.
A good reference is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style
_Top-Posting_ means writing the remarks first, then leave the rest
quoted (if quoted at all) below, no matter, how long it is.
_Bottom-Posting_ means the reversal: own remarks below a whole bunch of
quoted text (if quoted at all).
If find both extremly annoying.
In addition on an archived mailing list like this it is completely
superfluous. Every post is on the web anyway and can be read in a nice
threaded mode there. See
http://www.oekonux.org/list-en/archive/threads.html
for this.
Please remember that your post is send not only to the few people
actively engaged in the discussion but to ~130 subcribers and the web
archive. In all places your post eats up resources which in the end
means using up some depletable resources. So if you are caring about
the natural environment you should keep your signal-noise-ratio high.
The signal-noise-ratio of your post is also influenced by your
signature. More than four lines of signature are usually considered
bad style and on a mailing list like this to me it is [deleted strong
word in the interest of kindness]. Some extremes are these two:
Sam Rose
Social Synergy
Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
AIM: Str9960
Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samrose
skype: samuelrose
email: samuel.rose gmail.com
http://socialsynergyweb.com/services
Related Sites/Blogs/Projects:
OpenBusinessModels: http://socialsynergyweb.net/cgi-bin/wiki/FrontPage
http://p2pfoundation.net
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
http://www.cooperationcommons.com
http://barcampbank.org
http://communitywiki.org
http://openfarmtech.org
Information Filtering:
http://ma.gnolia.com/people/srose/bookmarks
http://del.icio.us/srose
http://twitter.com/SamRose
These are 25 lines of signature! Together with one line of reply this
makes up for a signal-noise-ratio of 1/25 which is 4%. Or look at
these 18 lines:
The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
alternatives.
Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p
Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU
KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/
I think everyone who is interested in this *has* already noticed this
and doesn't need in each and every post again and again and again...
If you think it needs to be told to the world over and over and over
again then *please* put it to a web site / Wiki page / whatever and
use a link to this page as a signature. Then the subscribers here are
free to check it again or leave it and do not get it forced down their
throats all the time.
Top quoting combined with such monster signatures results in real
extremes. Look at this:
http://www.oekonux.org/list-en/archive/msg04744.html
This post contains three lines which are signal. Three lines are fine.
It helps readers to be terse. And it contains 1111 lines of noise.
This is a signal-noise-ratio of 0.27%! Yes it is even way below 1%!
From these 1111 lines 195 lines are only blindly copied signatures.
I.e. even if someone would wade through the 1111 lines to try to find
out what the poster relates to there are still nearly 20% which are
just plain and simple junk.
Appeal: Please use userfriendly inline quoting.
Yes. There are many mail readers out there which are capable of this.
Thunderbird for instance runs on Linux as well as on Windows. Even if
you need to use a web front end it is two key presses
(Shift-Control-End, Delete) to delete all the text you are not using
anyway. I think using these two key presses is not asked too much -
even if you are in a hurry.
Last on Subject: When writing a reply, then you have three possibilities
to use the subject:
1. open up a new mail with a new subject describing the new topic
2. leave the subject as it is, because the answer is about that subject
3. shifting the subject to another subject, because it has changed
While 1. and 2. are self-evidant, the latter needs cooperation. It goes
like this:
1. person: Old subject
2. person: Re: Old subject
3. person: New subject (was: Re: Old subject)
4. person: New subject
5. person: Re: New subject
If you see this, then the cooperation has failed:
Re: New subject (was: Re: Old subject)
I can only emphasize this as well. Please note that the mails are put
to a web based mail archive. The subjects *are* important to have an
idea of what a post is about. Please *try hard* to find subjects
making senes and use the techniques StefanMz explained. Or if you
consider your post not interesting enough to give it a meaningful
subject you probably should not send it here at all.
It is also important to not simply use a reply for filling in the mail
address when you want to write about a new subject. Technically it is
still a reply to the old subject and in the web archive it will be
buried in the thread you are replying to. This makes it nearly
impossible to find the new subject later on.
It not so complicated, it simply needs some attention when replying. If
it works, we will all benefit from it.
And if it doesn't it is really unfriendly - to say the least.
Grüße
Stefan
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