do you know enough about what (other) Bazaar developers are doing?

[John Arbash Meinel]

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Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
| Martin Pool writes:
|  > On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 7:25 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull
<stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
|  > > My issues are (1) the Bundle Buggy messages (but with my MUA
that's my
|  > > laziness, I could easily filter them out) and (2) the amount of top-
|  > > and bottom-posting and lack of trimming that some core developers do.
|  >
|  > I particularly notice lack of trimming in code reviews.  Is that what
|  > you had in mind?
|
| It seems more prevalent in code review threads, yes, but I'm not
| referring to cases where the whole patch is quoted.  More where people
| often leave gobs of previous commentary in as well.  It's especially
| noticable when somebody quotes an entire /reply/ to a patch and ends
| with
|
| bb:approve
| Robert

Well, would a top post be better?

I certainly find trimming the entire message to lose all context, so I
would prefer at least *some* context.

My mail client also tends to make it clear which sections are quotes
versus what is new content (though it fails with *your* replies because
instead of starting the line with '>' your mail client starts the line
with ' >') Though I can similarly easily jump past what is fairly
clearly a quote.

|
| and yes, I personally do find it especially annoying when Robert does
| it :-) because I try to read most of what he writes!
|
|  > Let's not turn this into a general thread about top posting or the
|  > ideal amount of quoting but if you could be a bit more specific that
|  > may help.
|
| Optimal quoting is certainly not my point; rather that the presence of
| large blocks of untrimmed quote changes the tone of a thread to me, to
| one where "we're all insiders here".
|
| It's possible that that "we're insiders here" tone is appropriate in
| code review threads.  Maybe I'm unusual as an outsider with no present
| plan to contribute code to Bazaar but who does read code reviews.
|
|

I certainly don't apply a large amount of crafting to messages that I
post to bzr.dev. Partly because I feel I should respond to most
messages, and I would still like to get done with real work. Perhaps I'm
being overzealous in trying to be active in all threads.

I think the #1 issues for under-trimming is when your reply is meant to
be a "quick response" such as the "BB:approve". Spending the time
filtering the message then takes significantly longer than anything
else, but giving 0 context also seems suboptimal.


*personally*, I'm not bothered by over quoting. And I feel it is better
to over-quote than to remove context that someone could have used.

I can try to be a better netizen, but I'm not sure how much trimming
really helps. (I certainly don't try to read anything quoted until I
find a new comment patch. Perhaps I'm unusual in that, and most people
read all the content, along with the final message.)

John
=:->
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