A Plea for sanity when posting to this list.

David david at kenpro.com.au
Tue May 3 22:54:15 UTC 2005


Especially since this i such a busy list, is it possible for posters to 
follow some simple sane rules for posting?

* Make your subject line relevant
* snip irrelevant material when replying
* change the subject line as the thread "evolves"
* keep it short, but complete
* don't top post 
* avoid "amen to that" responses
* other things I haven't thought of?
___________________________________________________________________

* Make your subject line relevant:

subject lines such as "A question", or "Can you help" are less likely to 
get a good response than something like: "Wifi won't connect - Hoary"

* Snip irrelevant material when replying

Scrolling through 200 lines to find a single sentence response buried at 
the bottom of a reply is a waste of time. Only repost what is relevant to 
your reply.

* Change the subject line as the thread "evolves"

Recently there was a post that started as a discussion about poor 
performance, and evolved into a discussion about hard drives and another 
about optimizing. I missed most of the latter because I thought it was a 
flame war! There is no rule that says that you can't CHANGE the subject to 
reflect the new discussion.

* Keep it short, but complete

Posts like "my computer crashes" without supporting detail are not 
helpful, but this is a busy list, so keep it short. If you aren't sure if 
you are giving too much detail (logs, error messages etc), put it all at 
the end so nobody is forced to wade through it.

* don't top post

Top posting makes discussion hard to follow. Snip anything from the 
original post that it isn't relevant.

* Avoid "amen to that" responses

You don't HAVE to tell the world that you agree with someone, unless there 
is a poll being taken. Recently I read through a huge reposting to 
find "I agree" at the end.




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