When you start a thread, good etiquette requires that you come back to it periodically. It was your idea and your baby, after all. Those of us participating usually like a little feedback from the thread-maker.
When you quote within a thread, you don’t need to quote the entire OP if you are the second poster in the thread. In fact, you very, very rarely need to quote the entire OP, or anyone else’s entire post. We use the <snip> convention here to indicate parts of a post have been deleted because they were not relevant to your response to the quoted poster.
When posting large posts, insert paragraph spaces frequently. This is not high school English, where you only insert paragraph breaks between paragraphs. It might not be perfect writing, but your readability here soars when the chunks of text have frequent breaks.
Smileys - use them or don’t use them, nobody really cares (well, some people might hate them, but what are they going to do about it?), but like most things, they have a lot more affect when used sparingly.
As I said, these things are all etiquette. Nobody will force you to do or not do any of them. It is simply appreciated.
Thanks for starting this, featherlou. Though I’ve not noticed the other points so much, it does seem like every other thread I’ve opened this month has been guilty of excessive OP quoting. It’s a strange thing to gnash my teeth over, but I take comfort in knowing I’m not alone.
When one Pits another Doper, one should provide a link to said Pitting in the thread in which the Pittee provoked said Pitting, with an appropriately worded invitation to continue the discussion (wo)mano a (wo)mano in the linked venue.
The problem with the OP quoting is the Quick Reply box says we should hit the icon in the post, and the one that says ‘reply’ seems like a logical icon to click. Only that one automatically quotes the whole post.
This excuse doesn’t fly. A) This has been going on for years, regardless of the availablility of the quick reply function (which I just mistyped as “fucktion”, which is highly amusing). B) People just merrily type in their reply under a bunch of words (including quote tags, even!) they didn’t type without noticing? I doubt it. If that is the case, maybe people should pay more attention to what they’re doing.
And finally… C) I’ve been bitching about this for years (no, really) and it’s still happening. I’ve given up.
I have been guilty of starting threads (or adding to threads) and not coming back for ages. I know it is bad form but I ask my Northern Hemisphere friends to take time zones into account. Often I have posted late in the evening and then gone to bed and then to work the next morning. I wasn’t posting and running, just my prime posting times are not times when you Northern Hemispere lot are about, then I get busy and OOOOOPS. I always read the discussion, it just seems like it has moved must the OP (or comment) by the time I get back.
Right now it is almost 2:45am. Guess who doesn’t have to work tomorrow
I have no excuse for the smilies I just like them.
Do NOT use the <snip> convention to eliminate that part of a previous post that might invalidate your own pet postion. Everyone notices.
There’s no real way to prove how much bigger/stronger/toughter you are than the poster who has raised your hackles, so anything along the lines of, “Let’s see how far you would get like that IRL” is generally seen as posturing- bad form.
Similarly, “Based on your previous statement, you are obviously one of those kinds of people who holds this made-up and far-fetched opinion and therefore I have no respect for you” is also bad form because it implies that your respect is worth having while simultaneously proving that it is not.
i-hate-organization-a.org is not generally considered to be a source of unbiased information on Organization A.
This reminded me of another one - read the whole damned thread before replying, please. I know the post a third of the way through has you all hot and bothered, but make a note for yourself and read the rest, please. Please. If you can manage to do that, you will see that your post has been made redundant multiple times by the time you posted it.
And tossing off a “I haven’t read the thread, but here’s my opinion” doesn’t cut it, either. A thread is a gestalt; throwing in a drive-by contributes nothing. It’s just basically an interruption.
Oh PLEASE yes!! Many a poster has posted something that I would really like to read, but it’s just too difficult for my aging eyes when it’s all smooshed together in a huge block of words. To hard for me to track, especially on my dainty little laptop. I’m waiting on my software to arrive from my mom’s so that I can start getting online on my desk top, but for now, I’m stuck on the laptop, since I stupidly left the software for my modem in TX.
But even with my 21" monitor, those large blocks of words are really hard to follow. And strangely enough, it seems as if the people I’d most like to read, have the habit of posting that way.
So please please please, frequent paragraph breaks!!!
