Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!bu-cs!ptownson
From: ptownson@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Patrick Townson)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: High Volume Calls For New Approach
Keywords: Signatures;long quotes
Message-ID: <26469@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 7 Dec 88 08:45:52 GMT
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 70

Seeing the recent messages regards the steadily increasing volume of traffic
on the net leads me to believe that before long net etiquette may need to be
rewritten to keep us all from getting buried in news.

[I say what follows because I enjoy being such a popular fellow  :) ]

The machinery obviously does not know the difference between *news* and
*signatures*.  Nor does it know the difference between new news and a quote
from the article being commented on. It has also been observed by astute
net-watchers that I don't know the difference between my ass and my elbow,
but that is something we can discuss at a later time.

May I respectfully suggest that cutting signatures to their bare bones and
*greatly* limiting the use of quotes from previous messages might reduce
traffic and associated storage requirements by one third? 

I realize the problems which arise from posting without some reference to
the earlier message. Without some point of reference, it can be impossible
for the reader to know what you are replying to, or to whom. But still, it
seems ridiculous to include entire messages in new messages. Some of the
quotes on the net remind me of the situation with Jean Paul Sarte. When he
was asked to write an introduction to a very short book by Jean Genet, he
wrote a 500 page treatise to sit on the front end of a book about 150 pages
long!

My rule of thumb -- if I must quote at all -- is to write one or two
introductory sentences of my own describing what I am responding about. They
usually take the form --

  "So.and.so from site.place wrote saying blah blah, and da da. He noted
  this and also that. I agree, because  (rest of response here)...
  (or) he is wrong, because  (rest here)....."

I realize some messages require somewhat more elaborate inclusion of prior
remarks, but frankly, most do not. We are not writing legal papers which
have to be filed in quintuplicate with some government agency. I would never
include message reference numbers in quotes simply because they are 
meaningless to anyone not on that machine. Inserting someone else's fully
qualified network address is rarely needed. 'joe.blow@schmoe' is usually
sufficient to refresh the memory of others who read your post. Yet these
lines with reference numbers and full address routings take up (apparently)
badly needed space on many machines. Why not try writing creative replies
incorporating as little as required of other people's text right in your
own message? 

As for signatures, yes they look lovely, but they may be getting too 
expensive from a machine resource point of view. I suggest still another
group on the net, which for lack of a better name I will call net.contributors.
This file can hold signatures, 'thumb-nail' biographical sketches of anyone
who wants to be listed, net addresses; postal addresses; phone numbers;
corporate affiliations; whatever. Anyone who thinks you (or I) are that
terribly, terribly witty and intelligent that they want to make contact can
review the net.contributors index. For the posting itself, just sign the
thing, like I always do, and will do now.

Patrick Townson

PS: If a postscript is necessary or desirable, keep it short and succinct,
like this one. As for those damnable disclaimers, perhaps a future revision
to readnews could issue a blanket disclaimer message each time someone 'tuned
in' on their machine. Something to the effect, 'the opinions expressed 
herein for the remainder of your session in readnews are solely that of the
author of each item and are not to be construed as the opinion or position
of the proprietor of the originating machine, or the network itself.'  Then
we could eliminate the thousand or so lines of disclaimers which have to
pass over the wire each day.

Thanks for thinking about it, anyway!

Patrick