[ExI] Filtering Digests

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Fri Jul 25 08:14:39 UTC 2008


On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 12:47 AM, Joseph Bloch wrote:
> You could set your filter to trash those emails with the words "extropy-chat
> Digest" in the subject line.
>


This is probably the best option for you.
email replies that quote the whole digest are tiresome even for
ordinary email readers, who often just delete them.

If a writer wants to enter a discussion, then the least they can do is
make the effort to trim their reply and put a meaningful subject line
on their message. If they can't be bothered to make this little
effort, then their message deserves to be trashed.

Unfortunately your other preference re top posting goes against the
recommended email standards for mailing lists.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style>

In the words of RFC 1855, the RFC Netiquette Guidelines, which
comprise a comprehensive set of voluntary netiquette conventions:
Quote:
    If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just
enough text of the original to give a context. This will make sure
readers understand when they start to read your response. When
replying to a message, include enough original material to be
understood but no more. It is extremely bad form to simply reply to a
message by including all the previous message: edit out all the
irrelevant material.
-----------------

Your top posting preference is fine for personal email, where your
contact knows and remembers what the two of you are talking about. But
on a mailing list with many contributors top posting gets confusing
because nobody knows who or what is being replied to.


But I certainly agree with you that all the irrelevant parts of the
original post should be trimmed from the reply. That helps everybody!
 :)

Best wishes, BillK



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