[tlug] Trimming Posts

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On 2009-08-17 09:16 -0400 (Mon), Scott Robbins wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 09:46:05PM +0900, Sotaro Kobayashi wrote:
>
> > Regards,
> >
> > Sotaro
>
> PLEASE try to not top post and to trim unnecessary text.

Scott, please try to trim unnecessary text. That "Regards," certainly
was not necessary to appreciate the context for your post, and you
quoted Sotaro's signing his name at the end and then added another line
to your post indicating that (among other things), it was Sotaro's post.

Since you tend to include the entire text of previous messages when
replying, I'm guessing that you're a a novice at trimming posts. Let me
give you a couple of hints, here.

First, you want to change your default from, "include everything" to
"include nothing." If you're not absolutely sure that you need a line
from someone else's post, just delete it. It's far, far more common to
err on the side of including too much than too little.

Second, keep in mind that the purpose of including quotes from other
posts is to keep the flow of conversation going. (This is why including
too much is worse than including too little; too much quoting breaks up
the conversation even more, since people have to wade through junk or,
as with me, they get tired of it and just ignore entire messages when
there's too much quoting.) Keeping this in mind, a good way to think
about what you want to keep is to ask yourself, "if I leave this line
out, will people be going back to the list archives to find out what
this line said?" If you don't think that they will, leave it out.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974
           Functional programming in all senses of the word:
                   http://www.starling-software.com