Terseness

Terseness

[John Volan]

While I highly respect Robert Dewar, I disagree with Jonathan Schilling.

(Nice and terse, right?  Gets right to the point, doesn't it?  But ...
what in the world am I referring to?  Hit a space now if you want to
find out. ;-)
\f

jls@summit.novell.com (-mlc-+Schilling J.) writes:

>I like the fact that Robert Dewar's posts are succinct and never quote 
>preceding posts.  Even if this is forced upon him by his news software,
>it's a blessed relief from the screenfulls of cascades you see all over
>the rest of Usenet.

I have to disagree with you here, Jonathan.  When someone responds to
a previous post, sometimes the response is hard to understand unless
it happens to immediately follow the original, or unless it quotes at
least part of the original.  My news software seems to sort posts by
time of arrival, not time of sending, and I frequently see a response
*after* the original post.  Depending on the transmission lags
involved, the original may occasionally appear *days* after the
response!  Even if the posts do arrive in sending order, there may be
a gap of several days between the original and the response, and I may
have forgotten what the original post said.  Or, if I let a few days go
by without reading the news, the original may already be long gone and
I may never see it at all!

I feel that a reasonable amount of quoting is a polite courtesy that
aids the reader's understanding.  Of course, like anything, this can
get out of hand if you take it to an extreme, but the opposite extreme
of not quoting at all is, IMHO, just as bad.

In Robert Dewar's case ... well, he's a very busy man, and the work
he's doing is of such importance to the future of Ada, that I think we
can all forgive him this slight indiscretion. :-)  Frankly, I'm
grateful that he can take the time to post to c.l.a at all!

John Volan

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--  Me : Person := (Name                => "John Volan",
--                  Company             => "Raytheon Missile Systems Division",
--                  E_Mail_Address      => "jgv@swl.msd.ray.com",
--                  Affiliation         => "Enthusiastic member of Team Ada!",
--                  Humorous_Disclaimer => "These opinions are undefined " &
--                                         "by my employer and therefore " &
--                                         "any use of them would be "     &
--                                         "totally erroneous.");
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Re: Terseness

[Robert Dewar]

John (Volan), I trust you use a news reader that follows threads, if not
it is VERY hard to follow and respond to news coherently. In particular,
the example message you just gave indeed had no context, because you
started a brand new thread. It is true that if you follow messages blindly
in sequence, then you might even get to like these horrible quotes.

So, John, just for interest, do you follow threads, or do you read messages
sequentially (I bet the latter!)

Re: Terseness

[John Volan]

dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

>John (Volan), I trust you use a news reader that follows threads, if not
>it is VERY hard to follow and respond to news coherently. 

[snip]

>So, John, just for interest, do you follow threads, or do you read messages
>sequentially (I bet the latter!)

Sorry, you lost that bet! ;-) Yes, my newsreader does follow threads
[*um, see footnote below].  This does help by at least placing a post
in the context of its thread, but sometimes this isn't enough context
to avoid confusion.  *Within* a given thread, I find that posts do not
necessarily appear in the order they were sent (presumably because of
geographical differences in transmission lag).  I suppose a smart
newsreader could sort posts by sending-order, as well as by thread,
but I don't think this would solve every problem.  What if you see a
response on Tuesday, read it (thus "eliminating" it from the thread),
and then finally get the original post on Thursday?

Even if posts do arrive in sending-order, what if there's a
significant time gap?  Let's say Mr. Alpha posts something on Tuesday.
Ms. Beta reads it on Wednesday, thinks up an interesting response on
Thursday, mulls on it overnight, and posts it on Friday.  By the time
poor Mr. Gamma sees Ms. Beta's response on Monday, his memory of Mr.
Alpha's original post has gotten a little foggy.  In the meanwhile,
the thread has spawned a lively discussion between Messrs. Delta,
Epsilon, and Zeta, who each fired off several posts on Wednesday,
Thursday, and Friday.  By the time poor Mr. Gamma wades through these
to get to Ms. Beta's post, the context of Mr. Alpha's original post
may have completely dissipated, unless Ms. Beta has been kind enough
to quote from it.  When Ms. Eta finally logs into the newsgroup a week
or so later (after her newsreader has already flushed Mr. Alpha's
post) she may see several simultaneous, intertwined discussions all
under the same subject (Mr. Theta and Ms. Iota having thrown in some
tangential issues), and there may be no clue as to what anybody is
talking about, other than what can be gleaned from quotes.

>It is true that if you follow messages blindly
>in sequence, then you might even get to like these horrible quotes.
                                                    ^^^^^^^^

Well, I'm certainly not an advocate of "horrible" quotes that go to
tremendous extremes.  I believe it's incumbent on a responder to be
judicious and selective in how much of the original to quote, and how
best to break up a long quote to respond to it point for point.
Anyone who just quotes a long post in its entirety without doing a
little editing is simply being lazy, in my book.  And if the quoted
post *itself* contains a huge quote ... well, that kind of cascading
is an abuse, pure and simple.  But just because quoting can be abused
doesn't necessarily mean that *all* quoting is absolutely bad, IMHO.
Like anything, it has to be approached thoughtfully.

>In particular,
>the example message you just gave indeed had no context, because you
>started a brand new thread. 

Er, if you recall, the original subject line used to be "Robert
Dewar's horrible posts".  I refuse to promote the rather bizarre
agenda of the person who started *that* thread, even to the extent of
having my posts carry such a subject line (or even by referring to it
with a "[was: ... ]" annotation).  I wanted my comments to be viewed
in a much milder and more constructive light, so I thought it wise to
start a whole new thread.

				-- John Volan

[*] P.S. In the above discussion, I'm assuming that the term "thread"
is synonymous with "subject", but maybe I'm still naive about Internet
lingo.  Are there newsreaders smart enough to "follow the references,"
thereby distinguishing separate "threads" even within the same
"subject"?  (In which case, why don't we make that bet best two out of
three?  ;-)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--  Me : Person := (Name                => "John Volan",
--                  Company             => "Raytheon Missile Systems Division",
--                  E_Mail_Address      => "jgv@swl.msd.ray.com",
--                  Affiliation         => "Enthusiastic member of Team Ada!",
--                  Humorous_Disclaimer => "These opinions are undefined " &
--                                         "by my employer and therefore " &
--                                         "any use of them would be "     &
--                                         "totally erroneous.");
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Terseness

[tmoran]

Today's 20 Team Ada e-mail messages totalled 1313 lines, 468 of
which were neither quote nor header.

Re: Terseness

[-mlc-+Schilling J.]

John Volan raises some valid points about the unorderedness of news readers,
but I still think it is possible to write a succinct follow-up without quoting.

;-)

-- 
Jonathan Schilling
Novell, UNIX Systems Group
jls@summit.novell.com