This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 13:27:01 -0700
From: J C Lawrence <claw@kanga.nu>
To: svlug@svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] Re: List netiquette
On Fri, 10 May 2002 22:33:25 -0700
Marc MERLIN <marc_news@merlins.org> wrote:
> I saw too many people doing this in a row, so here's a quick reminder
> Please do not write two lines at the top and quote 150+ lines of old
> text that's we'll all already seen several times. It's a killer,
> especially for digest users (and we have many)
> You should properly trim the quotes and answer under the part that you
> are quoting.
> See http://www.svlug.org/policies/list-policy.shtml for more details.
Asides from RFC 1855 as a general netiquette quite, I usually quote the
following set of URLs to top posters:
http://www.ptialaska.net/~kmorgan/nquote.html
http://www.zedtoo.demon.co.uk/jcode/basic.html
http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote2.html#ss2.3
http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/http/quote.html
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/gey_stv0.htm
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/gey_chr0.htm
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/usenet/brox.html
http://www.spfc.org/band/faq.html?faq_id=10
===
From: "Karsten M. Self" <kmself@ix.netcom.com>
To: svlug@svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] Re: List netiquette
on Sat, May 11, 2002, J C Lawrence (claw@kanga.nu) wrote:
> On Fri, 10 May 2002 22:33:25 -0700=20
> Marc MERLIN <marc_news@merlins.org> wrote:
> > I saw too many people doing this in a row, so here's a quick reminder
> > Please do not write two lines at the top and quote 150+ lines of old
> > text that's we'll all already seen several times. It's a killer,
> > especially for digest users (and we have many)
> > You should properly trim the quotes and answer under the part that you
> > are quoting.
> > See http://www.svlug.org/policies/list-policy.shtml for more details.
> Asides from RFC 1855 as a general netiquette quite, I usually quote the
> following set of URLs to top posters:
> http://www.ptialaska.net/~kmorgan/nquote.html
> http://www.zedtoo.demon.co.uk/jcode/basic.html
> http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote2.html#ss2.3
> http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/http/quote.html
> http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/gey_stv0.htm
> http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/gey_chr0.htm
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/usenet/brox.html
> http://www.spfc.org/band/faq.html?faq_id=3D10
I've got a rant called "quote" in the vafm / rant-o-matic, which is
great for piping into console-based mailers. It also provides small
amounts of social lubricant:
http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Download/rant-o-matic.tar.gz
=2E..the format is an 'ar' archive (easily extensible), with a search-and-
extract utility ("rant"):
rant: print one of a set of canned rants. =20
usage: rant <rant>
available rants include: backup, book, browser, bughowto,
disclaimers, downtime, gpg, grammar, help, html, keyserver,
list-av-alert, mungemail, nigeriascam, partition, postfix,
pressdisclaim, quote, rfc-ignorant, spamresponse, sshrsakey,
subject, vacation, web-argument, wrap, xdm
As to the quote text, I've been known to submit the following, generally
off-list:
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Short version:
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Please use postfix quoting format: your reply goes below the material
cited. Trim your quotes appropriately and ensure your attributions are
accurate.
Thank you.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Long version:
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Your comments are interesting, considered, and informative, but are very
difficult to read given the quoting and followup styles you've chosen.
May I suggest the following style advocated in the "Email Quoting"
section of the Jargon File.
You should also prefix each quoted line with an appropriate quote
character. A '> ' or '>' for each level of quotation should be
included, e.g.:
> > Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed
> > diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna
> > aliquam erat volutpat.=20
>
> Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation
> ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo
> consequat.=20
Note also that you should _include_ an attribution line for each level
of quoting in your message, e.g.:
on Tue, Sep 04, 2001, Karsten M. Self (kmself@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
so that quotes may be attributed to their authors. You should _exclude_
signature blocks at the end of messages from your quoted context.
If possible, flow text that has been quoted, e.g.:
> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit,
> sed diam
> nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna
> aliquam erat
> volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud
> exerci tation
=2E..is far harder to read than:
> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit,
> sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore
> magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam,
> quis nostrud exerci tation
A good text editor (I use and recommend vim) can do this automatically.
"Email Quoting" from the Jargon File.
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/Email-Quotes.html
Most netters view an inclusion as a promise that comment on it will
immediately follow. The preferred, conversational style looks like
this:
> relevant excerpt 1
response to excerpt
> relevant excerpt 2
response to excerpt
> relevant excerpt 3
response to excerpt
or for short messages like this:
> entire message
response to message
Thanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents, one will
occasionally see the entire quoted message after the response, like
this:
response to message
> entire message
but this practice is strongly deprecated.
Fixing quoting problems with Microsoft Outlook
As a large number of people use Microsoft Outlook, ("Outlook is a
security hole that also happens to be an e-mail client", Steven J.
Vaughan-Nichols [1]) despite the many security exploits associated with the
program, to say nothing of its flouting of Internet mail standards, I've
assembled the following directions to achieve a closer conformance with
Internet mail standards. See also:
http://www.lemis.com/email/fixing-outlook.html
To set linewrap, quote character, and non-HTML mail preferences:
From the "Tools" menu, chose "Options...".=20
=20
To set Plain Text as the default format:
Click the "Send" tab. Under "Mail Sending Format", select
"Plain Text".
To wrap lines at 72 characters:
While still on that same tab, click the "Plain Text Settings"
button to bring up the "Plain Text Settings" dialog. Edit the
value of the "Automatically wrap text at __ characters, when
sending" field to 72.
To set the prefix character:
While still on the "Plain Text Settings" dialog, ensure that the
"Indent the original text with __ when replying or forwarding"
field is checked, and that "> " is selected in the drop box.
(Both should be so by default.)
Thanks to Dan Martinez for this information.
--------------------
Notes
1. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols "The best way to stop 'ILOVEYOU' is to
stop using Outlook." Sm@rt Reseller.
http://membrane.com/security/secure/Microsoft_Outlook_Express.html
Thank you.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
===
From: Brian Bilbrey <bilbrey@orbdesigns.com>
To: Robert Hajime Lanning <lanning@lanning.cc>
Cc: svlug@svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] Re: List netiquette
On Sunday 12 May 2002 07:46, Robert Hajime Lanning wrote:
> I do what the majority does. (Also, happens to be the
> most convenient for the way most email apps work. They
> place the cursor at the top.)
Do you understand that freedom also includes the freedom for
the rest of a community to ignore you, killfile messages
from you, disregard your reque sts for assistance... all
because you're deciding not to go along with the accepted
norms, even when you're being asked politely, and
repeatedly, by a number of individuals, including the person
responsible for the mailing lists?
> Now I will trim includes when I feel it is too long and parts do not
> pertain to what I am saying.
That's very kind of you, and I know that I appreciate the
effort on your part.
What *I* find useful about the type of trimming and quoting
that's recommended is that it reads like a conversation
- there's more of a flow to the textIf I had put all of this
at the top (or even at the bottom), it would make l= ess
sense than it does interspersed as it is.
The polite thing to do, Robert, is reply by saying you'll do
as requested, even though you disagree, simply because
that's how this community is.
====
Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 10:24:54 -0700
From: "Mark C. Langston" <mark@bitshift.org>
To: svlug@svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] Re: List netiquette
On Sun, May 12, 2002 at 07:46:03AM -0700, Robert Hajime Lanning wrote:
> I do what the majority does. (Also, happens to be the most convenient for
> the way most email apps work. They place the cursor at the top.)
Really? Mutt never does that to me. More correctly, I should say vi
never does that to me, since it's the editor I use. True, it places the
cursor at the very top, but that happens to be the headers. Which I
sometimes edit.
Yet magically, somehow, I manage to make my way to the bottom of the
quoted text, edit appropriately, and then add my banalitites. Uphill.
Both ways. In the snow. With this lumbago.
You use the word "most" an awful lot. I don't think it means what you
think it means. Perhaps you meant "most" for values of "most" that
are narrowly defined as, "GUI e-mail clients that either _are_
Outlook, a derivative of Outlook code, or were written to give dinks
comfortable with Outlook something familiar to play with then they
send e-mail".
In the defense of "top-quoters", USENET was indeed once a top-quoting
haven (check the A news and B news archives). However, that practice
quickly died, and with good reason, many of which were already mentioned
here. Then, it was excusable: Nobody had stopped to consider the
alternatives or the effects of their behavior. Now, it's just laziness
and an unwillingness to take the 1.5 seconds that would be required to
use the scroll bar on your client (or, *gasp* the arrow keys or
the keys bound to moving at page boundaries!).
If you're unwilling to parse what's already been said, why should we
be bothered to attempt parsing what you have to say? Join the
conversation, don't try to talk over it.
===