[T3] Editing list replies

["Jim Adney" <jadney@vwtype3.org>]

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

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