TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:BREVITYPLEASE - A Suggestion From:"Nancy E. Kaminski" <nancykam -at- MEDIAONE -dot- NET> Date:Wed, 17 Feb 1999 11:22:11 -0600
I agree with the sentiment that partial message quoting is the most polite
way to continue a thread. May I offer as an example another list I belong
to -- it has strict rules about quoting length and sigs because it runs on a
very high-traffic server, and they must conserve space.
Anyone who posts to this list must not quote any more than 4 lines of a
previous message in any one chunk. This is usually enough to put a comment
into context, and really helps other readers to follow the thread of a
discussion. You can quote a lot of chunks in your message, with your
comments following each chunk. (We are also forbidden to have sigs more than
6 lines long, or to quote other people's sigs or the trailer messages--3
violations of these rules get you no-posted for a week.)
This makes for very enjoyable, easily followed list discussions, and people
are pretty good about following the rules. While I'm not suggesting that
Eric adopt them (he certainly has enough to do!), we might keep them in mind
to use on any list we participate on. I've been well trained by that list,
and tend to follow those rules no matter which list I post to.
FWIW,
Nancy Kaminski
nancykam -at- mediaone -dot- net