[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index] [New Search]
Listees: This is just my weekly reminder to edit excess verbage from your replies to the list. Just remember that there's no need to include the ENTIRE message that you're responding to; just quote the small part that will remind us what you're replying to and delete the rest. If you tend to write your reply at the top of the message and then just include the whole previous message at the bottom "just in case" then you can probably concede that what you left at the bottom isn't really essential to your comment. Here's why it's important for each of us to think about this: Every post is archived. When you quote a previous message the archive now has 2 copies of that previous post, and the space it takes up has doubled. When someone else does the same now it is tripled..., and so on. Disk/archive space is finite and costs the list money. Archiving the same thing over and over again is both wasteful and makes it harder to search the archive for something you are interested in. In techspeak, it reduces the signal to noise ratio of the information there. Every message sent on the internet uses some amount of bandwidth, or time on the line. When you post excess stuff you think of it as just one message, but when you send your message to our list server it then resends it 400-500 times, once to each list subscriber. This means that the excess use in 1 message gets multiplied many times and the effect can be large. Finally, many of us have dial-up internet connections which take time to download. While the extra time may seem insignificant, it adds up when you consider that 400-500 of us do this every day, day after day. There's a tendency to think of the Internet as a resource with infinite depth. Of course this is not true and bandwidth limitations are a constant problem. There are many kinds of abuses of internet bandwidth, which in my opinion, will eventually bring the ISPs to charge each user for their monthly usage (MB downloaded + MB uploaded) in addition to connect time. It's clear that many people won't be happy with this, so the best way to forestall it is to learn to control your bandwidth consumption now. thanks for listening, - Jim Adney jadney@vwtype3.org Madison, WI 53711-3054 USA ------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe? mailto:type3-request@vwtype3.org, Subject: unsubscribe