[UCLA-LUG] A ClueStick(TM)

[Frederick Lee]

On Wed, 10 May 2000 09:10:53 -0700, said Luis <Luis@billingsupport.com>:
>I'm very sorry to all the members, Eudora for some reason sent out double 
>email's . I know how some members get upset about receiving the same email 
>twice. So I'm very sorry once again.
>
>
>Luis


All right.  That does it.

Luis, you are seriously and dangerously short on clue.

I have tried being polite to you and hinting at what would be proper
netiquette, but it appears your clueon flux is close to nil.

For the edification of others by the principle of "learn from the mistakes of
others", I am making this public.

Your most grievous transgression is the inclusion of an ENTIRE post, or worse,
and ENTIRE DAY'S DIGEST, to which your reply numbered within the handful of
lines.  You failed to remove irrelevant *portions* of text.  Do note that the
post to which you reply is being *quoted*.  As such, PLEASE remove the portions
of text which has absolutely nothing to do with what you are saying.  If not
for the sake of modem users, then, please, for the sake of thread continuity!
It becomes disruptive to a thread when your post consists of an entire day's
digest of which only 12 lines are relevant, and the other 200 still have to be
drudged through because they were still included because you did not bother
removing those lines.

It is not that difficult to delete unrelated lines of text.  See that mouse?
In your reply post, highlight (you *DO* know how to highlight, right?) the
unrelated text and hit Delete.  You know, that key on your keyboard labeled
"Delete".  That's what I was trying to hint at, but apparently such very
explicit steps were still too subtle for you.  

If you must require an enumeration of WHY deleting unrelated lines of text is
important, I am more than willing to list them out.  It is a common practice
of netiquette, and there are plenty of resources on that.

You may or may not know, but AOL (America OnLine) in general has a reputation
for clueless people.  When AOL first let its subscribers loose on the Internet,
there was a sudden explosion in the number of instances where a reply to a
mailing list or a newsgroup consisted of anywhere from 20 to 2000 lines of
quoted text, and a single line of "I agree", or "Me too", the much infamous
me-too'ers.  This was, and is, horrendously rude.  If readers wanted to hold
on the entire original post, they would have.  If they got rid of the entire
original post, they did so for a reason.  Quoting the entire post verbatim
and replying with a single line was forcefully stuffing the same thing down
the readers throat that they already read, or did not want to keep.

A reply should contain enough of the original message to make it obvious what
the context of the reply is.  There are people who receive upwards of 500
pieces of e-mail per day.  Not only would having every single mailing post
contain the entire original quoted verbatim cause much trouble with mailbox
sizes, but these people do not have enough time to sift through 700 lines of
text to figure out what someone is responding to.  There should be enough
quoted material so that such a person would still know what the flow of
conversation was even though a day or two has passed.  An entire day's digest
is excessive.  A 1:300 ratio of reply to quoted is also excessive.  At the
very least, strive to maintain a 1:1 ratio of lines of reply to lines of quote.

In plain English, try to have as many lines of reply as you have lines of
quoted original.  Cut down on the quoted original post if you must, but please,
don't pull a stunt like reply with 2 lines to a 300 line post that is fully
included verbatim.

I have remained silent on this for a a very long while.  I figured you, Luis,
would eventually learn.  I was hopeful you would learn from example, from the
other posts on this list.  About snipping out, that is removing, irrelevant
text in replies.  Was that not obvious enough in this amount of time?  There
were more than enough instances of other people snipping irrelevant text that
you should have learned by osmosis.  There was a reason for it being done!




Your most recent post is an even worse transgression.  Not only is your Python
question TOTALLY *UN*related to the original post's information on sound
configuration, BUT THAT ORIGINAL POST WAS A MONTH AGO.  Please, explain the
logic behind what you have pulled.  The original post you quoted is totally
irrelevant, and it was post that is way old.  Why did you do that?  Is there
something wrong with just sending a new fresh mail to the mailing list?  Were
you somehow desperate to dig up this mailing list's e-mail address from your
mail archives?  Has a mail virus randomly decimated your mail setup?  Or are
you deliberately trying to be rude?


Consider this a flame.  I have given you the benefit of the doubt, that perhaps
you were just making minor mistakes but still clueful.  I have tried being
polite and subtle, but that didn't work.  I now find I must be direct, forward,
rude, and in your face to get my point across.  You have been overtly rude as a
netizen, and I feel it is time you change your ways in this respect.  If you
require additional resources on proper netiquette, I will be more than happy to
dig them up for you.


If you still do not understand what I am saying, I fear for your abilities.
PLEASE, REMOVE IRRELEVANT LINES YOUR REPLIES!  Otherwise, I will have to
repeatly beat you with the ClueStick(TM) until you understand.


-Fred