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