Ever since I started moderating the list, I have been editing posts.
A lot of you are still appending, or allowing your mail client to append,
part or all of the text of the message you're responding to. I've been
returning the more egregious cases (whole messages) to the sender.
Where it's been clear that the sender at least made an attempt to edit
down the text, I've either passed them to the list as is or, in most
cases, removed the appendage as unnecessary baggage. No one has
complained, either about the editing or about difficulties following
the thread of the discussion.
I am taking the next three weeks off work so I can stay home and tear
into my house. This means that I won't have a lot of time for moderating
the list. I'll be checking on things in the evening, and approving
postings then.
I won't have time to do this editing for the next three weeks.
I'll either approve or disapprove of messages, and there will likely
not be a return message on the posts I disallow.
In light of both situations above, I'm asking for a minor shift
in behavior. Most modern mail clients will allow you to place the
text of the message you're responding to either above or below your
own text. The default is set to append, rather than pre-pend. This is
an unfortunate choice, in that it pre-disposes users to inattention
to detail. If the text you're responding to is ahead of your own words,
you're (we're/I'm) more likely to edit it judiciously so that it doesn't
overshadow our own, more, IMHO, important stuff.
So, what I need folks to do is this: if you must or need to include part
of the message you're responding to in your own message, pre-pend the
included text rather than let it hang on the end like some afterthought,
and add your comments below.
I will be much more likely to approve messages with pre-pended text
than appended text. Of course, the simplest thing would be to just
respond and take it for granted that your fellow correspondents on
the list are intelligent enough to link your message to the thread
of discussion it's following or savvy enough to go to the list
archives and retrieve the previous message(s) and contextualize your
message for themselves.
thanks,
bj
-
_____________________________________________
List un/subscription information is at:
http://communication.ucsd.edu/shaku/listsub.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jan 06 2006 - 10:00:46 PST