Message formatting reminder

[Marc Sira]

Folks, please take care not to top-post, that practice of quoting back
the entire replied-to message (headers, signature ad lines and all)
after your sent message. You don't have to arrange your messages in
netiquette-friendly quote-reply order if you prefer not to, but it only
takes a second to trim out the unnecessary quoted material. It shows that
you care about what you're saying and the people reading it.

This has always been a bit of a problem on this list, but lately it's
becoming epidemic. The last digest had 656 lines (including headers), 409
of which were quoted back. Even allowing for necessary quoted material,
that's less than 1/3rd new text after removing the headers.

Aside from the wasted bandwidth, it makes the digest form of the list very difficult to read, especially for people using older & slower equipment. It's
also just vastly less readable, and it becomes very easy to miss a question
in a message among the morass of repeated material. If your message is worth
sending at all, isn't it worth making it legible? I try to offer what answers
I can on this list, but it's difficult if I can barely see the questions being
asked. I personally still enjoy the list, but a lot less than I could if just
a bit more attention were paid to such a minor message formatting step.

One other, somewhat connected note is to consider who your message is
addressed to - if it's mostly or entirely to one person, remember to edit
the To: header and just send it to them. No need to put it out to the entire
list if it's not really germane. Sometimes this step can also avoid
embarrassment. ;)

My tired eyes thank you (and other people's too, I'll bet).

-- 
Marc Sira		|	toh at victoria.tc.ca
If you can't play with words, what good are they?