Avast me hearties,

When posting to TWL it's important to remember that almost 1000 members are
going to see what you've sent. With that number of people reading these
messages in one of four different formats (TWL, TWL Digest, TWL Archive, and
Mike Harrington's HTML Digest) it behooves us to do everything we can to
make the message understandable. The two easiest ways of maximizing
readability are to properly edit material quoted from previous posts and to
use appropriate subject lines. The purpose of this message is to give some
of the 'whats', 'hows', and 'whys' of message editing and subject line
selection.

First, what needs to be quoted and what needs to be snipped?

Before you even hit the reply key, try to think if your reply is going to
advance the discussion at hand. If your post only pertains to the person who
wrote the original post then it's probably better to respond privately.
Likewise, if you are replying out of anger do it in private and encourage
the other person to do the same (IMHO Flame wars in a forum such as this are
unseemly). Conversely, if all you want to do is agree with someone that can
be done privately as well.

What needs to be quoted? As little as possible while still letting the
reader know what you are replying to. More often than not this means that
almost no quoting at all is needed.

What needs to be snipped?

1. The header material that some e-mail programs append to the body of the
   message. You might leave the "from" information intact but the rest is
   either redundant or unimportant.

2. The originator's sig. It's redundant as well.

2a. While we're on the subject of sig's I'd like to make an appeal for short
ones; The generally accepted size for a sig is four lines or less. Remember
it's a sig, not an autobiography.

3. Anything else that isn't pertinent to your post. If the originator asks 5
   questions and you're only answering one of them, why quote the other 4?
   Likewise if you're replying to one sentence about an inverter problem in a
   three page cruise report then you only need to quote that one sentence (it
   might be appropriate to change the subject line as well [more later]).

Once you've decided on what stays and what goes, how do you get rid of the
stuff you don't want?

If your e-mail program supports it you might consider setting it up to NOT
include any quoted material from the original post. In this mode you cut the
material of interest out of the original and paste it into your reply.

If that doesn't appeal to you then the alternative is to erase everything
that you don't need. To do that, use the following steps:

1. Put the mouse pointer at the beginning of the text you want to eliminate.

2. Click and hold the left mouse button.

3. Drag the mouse pointer (while still holding the left mouse button) to the
   end of the text.

4. The text you are getting rid of should now be highlighted.

5. Release the left mouse button.

6. Press the delete key.  VOILA!

7. (Optional) Some folks like to type in the word [snip] wherever a block of
   text has been removed. Sometimes this helps with readability and sometimes
   it's just extra typing. You be the judge.

This procedure works for just about any PC based text manipulation, if you
have a Mac the procedure is probably almost identical (don't Macs have just
one mouse button?).

One other thing I'd like to point out about this: It's really a quick and
easy process to do this sort of editing. When you see the instructions
written out it sounds like a major headache but it really isn't. I snip the
heck out of all my replies (trying to set a good example don'cha know) and I
NEVER spend more than five to ten seconds at it.

OK. So why is it so important to snip? Because it's polite. Polite, that is,
to three different groups.

1. Listees who have slow or expensive connections. We've all seen the many
   threads on how to get e-mail at sea and one thing has been common to all -
   that e-mail at sea is slow AND expensive and that it's not likely to change
   soon. It also would come as no surprise if some of our colleagues outside
   North America weren't afforded the Internet luxuries many of us take for
   granted.

2. Listees who take the digest version of the list. BTW: Listees who read
   the TWL Digest make up almost 60% of our membership and constitute the
   fastest growing segment as well. If you get an e-mail with a ton of quoted
   stuff you probably read what you want and dump the rest, but if you read the
   digest that same ton of quoted stuff CAN'T be ignored. You have to scroll
   through the whole thing to find the start of the next message. That
   scrolling wouldn't be a big deal if it only happened occasionally but when
   it happens 3 to 6 times a day it can become irritating.

3. List hosts. Georgs has asked that quoting be kept to a minimum and when
   your host asks you to do something it's only polite to comply. BTW: Georgs
   is too polite to mention this but it costs money to process list mail and to
   store the list archives. Less quoting means less out of pocket for our
   listmeister.

Now, for a word about Subject Lines:

This mainly applies to Digest subscribers. It seems that hardly a day
goes by without seeing a post with a subject line like this "TWL: Re:
trawler-world-list V4 #111". That tells the reader that you're a digest
subscriber and that you're replying to one out of 40 or 50 messages that
came through the list on the 20th of October. What it doesn't give the
prospective reader is any sense of what your post is about.

It would be a shame if your post wasn't read by the person who has the
answer you need just because the subject line gave no indication of what
your message was about.

Another reason for using a descriptive subject line is that it makes it
easier to find that message in the archives. It's fairly common for a
TWListee to be given the suggestion to check the archives in the following
way "Look in the August 1999 archives under RADAR". Now, you may have
written the definitive post on RADAR during that period of time but if you
left the digest subject line in place rather than changing it to a
descriptive one your post will not be found.

If you're replying to a previous message the best thing to do is to cut the
exact subject line of the post to which you are replying out of the digest
and paste it into the "subject" box of your own message. There are also
times when it would be more appropriate to change the subject line to
something more descriptive of what you are posting.

Of course, if you're posting a new message you get to make up your own
subject line (wheee!)

TIA for helping the list to run smoothly.

Alex Hirsekorn
TWL Help Team

<<First, what needs to be quoted and what needs to be
snipped?...If your e-mail program supports it you
might consider setting it up to NOT
include any quoted material from the original post. >>

The main problem isn't insufficient snipping, it's a
-total lack of snipping- by some TWL'ers.  During the
recent OS thread, one 3 page reply quoted an entire 8
page previous message.  Another 1 page reply quoted an
entire 5 page message.  Both quoted messages were
undoubtedly quoted automatically by the e-mail
software being used; this quoting option needs to be
turned off.  Common courtesy (much less the limited
bandwidth of some TWL'ers) demands that we not clutter
up the list with so much extraneous matter.

If the situation doesn't improve, my personal solution
will be to install filters against those people who
regularly quote entire previous posts, sending their
TWL posts directly to my Trash bin.

Mark Richter, Winnie the Pooh

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