I have noticed that some of our Gentle Readers have taken to quoting the entire text of a previous post they are replying to.
This is not only unsightly, it wastes our bandwidth resources and increases thread download times.
Please limit your quoting to the few pertinent lines you are addressing, and do not feel the need to refresh our memory as to what the original topic post said, that’s why we have scroll bars. More concise quoting will give all of our threads better “curb appeal” and help The Chicago Reader keep our new clean server clean.
Thank you for listening, and please, post your comments to keep this at the top for awhile.
Actually I don’t generally like cutting and pasting, but then I read Lynn B’s (I think it was Lynn, sorry if I’m wrong) note in OpalCat’s TM page, about how important it is to cite the respondee post to prevent lots of scrolling up.
And no more queen for a day, I’ve heard that the House of Windsor is economizing titles of royalty.
“Anything is peaceful from one thousand, three hundred and fifty-three feet.”
Another thought: Don’t bother C&P’ing if you’re responding to the last post in a forum, unless it’s really long (see the “Great God Debate” forums). Reference to the user name in this instance is generally quite adequate.
“I wept because I had no shoes, then I met a man with no feet. So I took his shoes” - Dave Barry
Loco: It depends on a lot of things, I would say. How long the original post was and how much of it you are responding to. How many post are between the post you are responding to and your own. How many posts the person you are responding to has on the thread.
If there are 25 posts between person X’s post that you are responding to and your own and person X has 3 other posts in the thread, might be a good idea to copy and paste the relevant part.
If there are 2 posts between person X’s post and yours and that was his/her only post, you can definitely get away with just mentioning who you are replying to.
“We’re gonna have lawyers here. It’ll be a fun time.”
–R.R.S.
The cut and paste was necessary on AOL because each post was a separate screen, and it was difficult to follow the thoughts without cut and paste. In this forum, with the whole conversation readily visible via scrolling, the need for cut and paste is much less. Use selectively, when it will help the reader understanding what you are referring to. Brevity is the soul of wit.
And while I’m at it, let me say the same thing about those long signature quotes. Sheeesh. They just slow down the process. We saw the quote the first time you posted, it was cute. You’ve posted ten times in this thread, and we have the same damn quote every post. Give it up. Just wastes downloading time and scrolling space.
I have to agree with CK, I was used to posting on AOL and I had continued the same on this Message board. Sorry for the long c&p, but on AOL you would get screamed at for not c&ping.
I’ll ditto Dex on the signature thing. The old echomail programs used to have a “tagline” (you call them SIG’s? That used to mean “special interest group”) file, and the program would randomly swap them out for each post - some people had hundreds of them and stealing your favorites was half the fun. Sample: “Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard drive?” (I guess you had to be there). Posting the same one over and over again was considered tacky.
Thank you for all your kind words and you people slew me, once again.
