[Ti] humble request - overquoting

[Mark C. Langston]

On Fri, Dec 06, 2002 at 04:48:33PM +0000, reis at imagingforensics.com wrote:
> 
> 
> No, taking the time to edit one's response is courteous. Not doing so
> is discourteous. Why? Because if helps others quickly find the
> relevant information, as opposed to just flinging everything for
> everyone else to sort out on their own.
> 
> Generally, e-mails I recieve that are overquoted, and that require
> more than a quick glance to find the relevant info are deleted. I
> probably miss some good information that way, but it is my preference
> to sorting through quotes of quotes of quotes. If we all did this,
> those who are discourteous would begin finding no responses to their
> posts, and would, hopefully, begin to change.
> 


Three other good reasons:

1)  People in places other than the US often pay for their network
access per-minute and/or per-byte.  Appropriately trimming messages
allows these people to participate in the discussion without undue cost.

2)  People who travel often find themselves using services and/or
methods that are metered per-minute and/or per-byte (e.g., very slow
modems, cellphone data access, or both).  Appropriate trimming is
courteous to these people as well.

3)  People are not always in a location where fast access is available.
For example, I just spent two weeks in Puerto Rico on business.
Occasionally, my access consisted of a slow frame relay between Puerto
Rico, through Manchester, UK, and back to California.  I appreciated
people who quoted only what was necessary, and cursed those who didn't.

-- 
Mark C. Langston                                    Sr. Unix SysAdmin
mark at bitshift.org                                       mark at seti.org
Systems & Network Admin                                SETI Institute
http://bitshift.org                               http://www.seti.org