SEELANGS Administrivia - Quoting Text

[Alex Rudd]

Dear SEELangers,

Forgive the intrusion into your daily discourse, but over the last
couple of weeks I've noticed an increase in a particular posting
behavior on which I feel I must comment and I ask you all to read
this message in its entirety.

Specifically, when replying to messages posted on SEELANGS, far too
many of you are including in your replies the entire original text
of the messages to which you are replying.  Of course, as far as I'm
concerned, even one person is "far too many" when it comes to including
extraneous quoted text in replies on the list.

This issue is addressed in the Welcome message sent to new subscribers.
Here's the excerpt:

--- Begin ---

Quoting Text From Original Messages
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Because all posts to SEELANGS are archived, and because disk
space is a finite resource, list members are asked to pay
close attention when they reply to messages on the list and
quote text.  Including portions of original messages is fine,
as long as it's done to provide context for the reader and
is done selectively.  However, quoting entire original
messages within the body of replies, when the original messages
are more than just a few lines, is prohibited.  Not only
does it fill up our disk space with extraneous text, but
those list members receiving SEELANGS in DIGEST format are
forced to read through the same messages three and four
times.

--- End ---

Please understand that I'm not accusing anyone of consciously or
even purposely disregarding the above-quoted guideline.  Instead,
I suspect the problem stems from a combination of the default
settings in place on many of the e-mail programs in use among you
and simple negligence in failing to adjust those settings to
comply with the guideline.  I understand, too, that in certain
circles it is nearly expected that the original message will be
quoted in its entirety (typically) beneath the reply so the
recipient can be reminded in full of his or her original message.
I'm just informing you that that convention does not exist on
most discussion lists and it does not exist on SEELANGS.

The guideline itself hints at the reasons for asking people to
limit the inclusion of quoted text, but I should probably elaborate
for the people who are not convinced or who would rather not change
what they're doing just because I'm asking nicely.

First, every message posted to this list is archived.  This message
from me is the 17,252nd post to the list.  I know that because all
the others have been saved.  We're able to save all those messages,
which date back now eleven and a half years, because we're
fortunate enough to have the full support of the computer center at
the City University of New York, which administers the LISTSERV
server on which SEELANGS runs and makes available to us disk space
to store our archives.

But that disk space is not limitless.  Several times over the years
I've had to endure red tape and obtain more disk space for us.  That
fight has gotten easier with time, as magnetic media have improved,
but I'd rather not wait until our disk space has filled up yet again
to remind you that the above-quoted guideline is there for a reason.

Second, many list members receive SEELANGS in DIGEST mode.  In other
words, rather than receive an individual e-mail for every message
posted to the list, they receive only one post (or sometimes two) per
day in which are bundled all the messages posted to the list that day.
Scrolling down such a long message is made even more tedious when the
reader is forced to revisit the same material he or she has already
read moments earlier, sometimes numerous times because of the number
of people who have quoted that material.

Please, in the future, remain cognizant of this guideline,
and all our guidelines, as they exist to make SEELANGS a
more useful and usable list for all subscribers.

If you should desire your own copy of the Welcome message
and don't have one, you can send the command:

GET WELCOME SEELANGS

in the body of e-mail to:  LISTSERV at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU

and it will be mailed to you.

If you've got access to the World Wide Web, you can also view
the Welcome message on-line at:

http://home.attbi.com/~lists/seelangs/

Finally, given the teaser I included above about the list's archives,
if any of you has never searched our archives and would be interested
in doing so, please be advised that you can obtain a copy of a file
I wrote explaining the basics by sending the command:

GET SEELANGS SEARCH

in the body of e-mail to:  LISTSERV at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.  If you have
any questions, please let me know.

Regards,

- Alex, list owner of SEELANGS    seelangs-request at listserv.cuny.edu
....................................................................
Alex Rudd                ahrjj at cunyvm.cuny.edu            ARS KA2ZOO
{Standard Disclaimer}    http://home.attbi.com/~lists/seelangs/

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