Re: old pentium

From: P.T. Breuer (ptb_at_oboe.it.uc3m.es)
Date: 01/20/04 

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 17:30:21 GMT

MikeyD <m_donaghy50@hotmail.com> wrote:
> P.T. Breuer wrote:
> > MikeyD <m_donaghy50@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >> However, on usenet we read one post after another.
> > We certainly do not! Where do you get that idea from? For example, the
> > post I read before this one was about mldonkey. I have no idea what
> > you are replying to apart from what I can see quoted above.
>
> Okay. But myself and eveyone I've watched reading usenet will read several
> messages from a thread in sequence before skipping to the next thread.

Then when they return to the same thread after reading a couple of
hundred (or a few thousand) others, they will see an apparently isolated
message saying "me too"! And that message may well turn up days or
weeks later.

That's why you have to provide the context

  a) to let people know what you are talking about
  b) to let people know WHICH bit of context you are talking about.

> > So? Why would you want to? Why would anyone want to write something
> > which will be skipped? If they do so, then they need to learn how to
> > write!

> Well, my view is that probably 80% of people reading my post will remember
> the previous one.

You are wrong - I don't remember even the last post I read! I certainly
don't recall what I read yesterday, which was several thousand posts
back. Do you recall what was in yesterdays newspaper?

And even if you were right, so what? You are writing for _posterity_,
so your post has to make sense in itself. That's why news articles
don't say in your morning paper "continuing the theme of yesterday's
column on this page ...". You'd get pretty annoyed if they did!

> I therefore expect them to skip the quote. But the quote
> should still be there for the other 20% who need it to remind them of my
> context.

You are wrong - you misperceive the medium totally! You are probably
unaware that it is not time-oriented, that there i sno way of knowing
what order or when other people see your posts, or IF they see them!

> I skip all the quote in almost every message I read.

Then how on earth do you know what they are talking about?
How on earth would you know what THIS sentence were talking about,
if you had not read the quoted sentence that it IS talking about?

> It's easier if I can
> just click

Click? You use a gui, which needs something as SLOW AS A MOUSE, to read
news! No wonder you read so little that you can "remember" "the last"
post in "the thread". You are beyond hope - you are driving in a
morris minor and wondering why everyone is honking at you.

> on to the next message rather than having to scroll through it
> to read the new text.

Christmas! I thought gui's were supposed to HELP you! Why don't you
just tap the space bar, like I do, to pass on down? Why do you use a
tool that hinders you? Why don't you configure it to do what you want.
instead of configuring it to make life hard for you?

> > If the quote is short and contains one question and you provide one reply,
> > then I will have no problem. But if there is more than one point in
> > the huge quoted trailer, as is the (yecch) "norm" in such cases, then I
> > have no idea which you are replying to!
>
> Very true. I agree 100% that when replying separately to multiple
> paragraphs, you have to bottom-post.

That's not "bottom posting"! No more than it's "top posting"!

> > Even if the quote is short, and I can be sure what YOU are replying to,
> > when it comes time for somebody to quote you and your reply, I will
> > have no idea what HE is replying to, you, or the original.

> Yes you will. You will probably just have read it,

I most certainly will not have!

> but if you haven't it's there below for you to read.

I won't have any idea which part of it he is talking about. If he is
too lazy to make himself clear, he gets dropped from my universe
anyway!

> > Post 3:
> >
> > Was that now?
> >> Yes please
> >> >Would you like some tea?

> > In other words, you yourself have no comprehension of how OTHER people
> > might understand what you wrote, nor of the comprehension difficulties
> > it will lead to. Desist. Do not do it.
>
> I don't do it, but I really think it would save people's time. I certainly
> know it would save my time if everyone on usenet top-posted.

It wouldn't. It would make all posts incomprensible. Thereby causing
you not to understand anything, thereby wasting your time. See "Post 3"
above as an example.

Peter

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