Gentlemen (and gentle ladies) - I know you have heard this before, and will
no doubt hear it again, but allow me to offer a note on Internet Etiquette.
When you quote what someone else said in your reply, either through sloth,
ignorance, or some quirk of your software, many of you are quoting the entire
previous post (and even more, sometimes).
For those of us on the digest, this means that we get to read the same
original post over and over again, as many times as there are responses.
While I am sure that your response had something cogent to add to the debate,
many of us, particularly the ones on the digest, perhaps, have limited time
to give to net stuff, and we may give in to temptation and simply delete the
whole thing, your cogent reply included.
This sort of thing has reached such a magnitude that in another group, I once
counted the content and found that in one digest, only 20% was new content
and the rest was quoted material.
While it is necessary to quote to give context to what you are posting,
please give the rest of us a break and put in only enough for us to know what
it is that you are replying to. Not the original poster's e-mail address, not
the 5 replies before you, not ......well, hopefully you get the picture.
Thank you.
Bill S.
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