Re: [tlug] [Was: Why Hollywood does break foreign films ?] Changing subject in thread.

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Bruno Raoult writes:
 > On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 1:14 PM, Josh Glover <jmglov@example.com>
 > wrote:

 >>  I'd call that "acceptably off-topic". ;)

 > This is interesting. As I wrote "Foreign" (vs US), japan is not in
 > the "foreign" group. But "The Ring" US remake would have been an OK
 > off-topic. Japan is therefore not included in "US foreign countries".

 > P.S. My trimming is voluntary following some advices. If trimming
 > this way is still good on 2013, just to "save time for the reader",
 > then it is wrong. Readers will have to find-out in all trimmed
 > messages one by one where we come from.

I don't think anybody advocates trimming that far.  I think a
reasonable goal is to vaguely approximate 1:1 in quotes to reply, so
you could have included up to 5 more lines from Josh's post.[1]

But trimming will always leave out some of the context, by definition.
The assumption in such lists is that people have threaded readers, and
will typically read the messages in a thread as a group, in order.
For most people most of the time this, plus a very few quoted lines,
is sufficient to establish context.

If it isn't for you, that's unfortunate.  Perhaps you can change your
reading software, or switch to digest mode to ensure that all the
messages come in one place.  I could probably write the necessary
routine to arrange that digests be threaded (instead of simply sorted
by date).

But it may be a language issue that can't be dealt with that way.
You're part of the group; it's not inappropriate for you to ask for
improvements in quoting and trimming practices from *your* point of
view even if they're suboptimal for others in the group, or require
more effort from us.  But we're not going to go all the way to
top-posting to maintain entire threads in a single message.[2]



Footnotes: 
[1]  I personally think +/- 2 or 3 lines is always acceptable, and for
larger blocks up to 1:2 or 2:1 differences are fine.  More or less. :-)

[2]  Or bottom-posting, which keitai MUAs have unfortunately made
popular -- from a readability perspective, this is the worst possible
choice, especially since keitai *also* seem to be prone to premature
ejaculation of incomplete messages, including some that have no new
content at all except the quote markers.