karl-desktop

[Gernot Hassenpflug]

On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 9:10 PM, Res <res at ausics.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Feb 2008, Chris Jones wrote:
>
>  > You didn't read it very carefully then..
>
>  it seems you are correct
>
>  > Technical Guidelines -> Proper Quoting -> Point 3
>  >
>  > "Write your email underneath the email which you are replying to."
>
>  right so then the bottom post objectors will come out, the proper way to
>  quote is to reply in-line, underneath the paragraphs you want to respond
>  to and delete the irrelvant stuff, which about 5% of the people around
>  here do, so you enforce it properly fully or not at all, and again its the
>  real moderators job to enforce it not the wannabes.

Hi there, I guess it is true that some lists need moderators, when
users are not educated enough to keep to norms they have learnt
elsewhere, in a tradition going back basically to Usenet I think,
before the September that never ended (look that one up on Wikipedia,
it is quite insightful). Some lists I belong to, the moderator will
issue and official warning to a person who a) top-posts, and/or b)
does not snip adequately. The reason is that people are busy, and
tradition has established the best way to quickly read a thread.
Threaded newsreaders, and threaded mail readers are great tools to go
with this. There are also related topics, like keeping the correct
subject so that threading is not broken, not removing certain header
fields, etc. etc. All of them are interesting from a technical
viewpoint, and when viewed from the point of view of someone wanting
to archive information in an easily searchable way.

Another thing is that many MLs and every Usenet groups have charters,
which loosely lay down the allowed topics and rules of engagement so
to speak. Loosely, because at the back of it all are these traditions
established before AOL opened up the web to all and sundry. Now, many
cultures keep these rules very strictly: for instance, in
Japanese-language Usenet groups and MLs, the most strict rule is not
to feed trolls, and any off-topic posts (OT) will be completely
ignored with no reply whatsoever, and people *do* use killfiles and
ignore filters to enforce the rules for themselves. This works without
moderation because of the culture. This list is of course a little
different, and much more tolerant. However, we should not abuse this
tolerance and think that it is all right for us to do what we wish
until someone forcibly stops us. I guess that thinking is likewise a
product of Western societies, together with freedom of expression et
cetera.

I hope that was a reasonable explanation of what people think about if
they have a background in MLs and Usenet.

Cheers, Gernot