From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!vax135!cornell!hal
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: Re: summaries on the net
Article-I.D.: cornell.3974
Posted: Mon Feb  7 13:03:58 1983
Received: Wed Feb  9 05:46:25 1983
References: watarts.1658

As one who has "posted a summary to the net", I think this discussion misses
the point.  First, I don't see anything wrong with including responses to
a question in the summary as long as an effort is made to weed out duplicates
and eliminate "please send me a copy of the summary" notes.  If a response
to a query is coherent and reasonably well written, I'd rather see the
original note than see the editor's paraphrase of the note.  But certainly
it's a good idea to edit and paraphrase a response that contains useful
information but is poorly written or contains much irrelevent material.
(I fixed up some typos and spelling errors in the notes I used in a summary.)

Second, if someone sends me a note in response to a request that advertises
that a summary will be posted or made available, I think that it's perfectly
reasonable to include that note or an edited version of it in the summary.
People responding to such requests are obviously aware that their note might
be sent to others, and are perfectly free to request that it not be forwarded
if there is some reason for such a request.  I certainly didn't get any
complaints from anyone after posting a summary.  I don't see any reason to
go through an exchange of notes with everyone who responds just to see if
it's OK to use their response.

Hal Perkins
uucp: {decvax|vax135|...}!cornell!hal
arpa: hal@cornell
bitnet: hal@crnlcs