Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/17/84; site opus.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!hao!cires!nbires!opus!rcd
From: rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Overhelpfulness in 2.10.2
Message-ID: <890@opus.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Oct-84 22:47:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: opus.890
Posted: Thu Oct 11 22:47:53 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Oct-84 04:56:49 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: NBI,Inc, Boulder CO
Lines: 27

There's one saying we're going to be seeing a lot on the net in the future.
It's:

*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***

I'm not sure why the newest postnews finds this necessary.  I can damn well
find where I want to put the message without any help, but it's easy to let
the funny *** line slip off the screen while you're editing and forget to
delete it.

A second over-helpfulness is sucking in the entire base article prefixed
with "> " for a followup.  What we're getting as a result is followups
which contain long, largely irrelevant base articles--even to the signature
lines.  (It would have been easy enough to have a separate program to
generate the "> "ed base article--at least that way the default would be
minimal relevant material instead of maximal irrelevant material, plus it's
easier to implement:-)

The business of tucking a copy of your posting into author.copy is another
feature I could do without.  If I need a copy I can always save it from the
editor, or I can save it later when I encounter the posting in reading
news.  Partly this was annoying because it took some poking around to find
out how to disable it--and one thing I did NOT need was yet another
environment variable.
-- 
Dick Dunn	{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd		(303)444-5710 x3086
   ...Relax...don't worry...have a homebrew.