[Catalyst] Re: Trimming and Quoting Oh My!

Daniel Hulme st at istic.org
Wed Jul 25 15:01:25 GMT 2007


On Wed, Jul 25, 2007 at 08:57:26AM -0400, Christopher H. Laco wrote:
> The world is full of battles; this need not be one of them.

But don't you see? Your "no holy wars" stance is itself a religious
position. Perhaps I just don't spend enough time on Usenet, but I don't
know anyone who actually *flames* people for their mail format or
quoting style. (It could be said that not knowing such people means I
spend exactly the right amount of time on Usenet.) The "mail format
police" seems to exist entirely in the imagination of people like you,
sir, trying to calm down holy wars that aren't really there :-)

Let's not all put our peacemaker hats on over one friendly post
reminding people to write in a way that people can easily read and
understand. I agree with the OP to the extent that this list seems to
frequently send me mail that I skip because there isn't any content on
the first screenfull, but OTOH it seems to infrequently send me mail
that I skip because the sender can't write comprehensible English. I
suppose on the whole it balances out. But it's still reasonable to
encourage reader-friendly quoting styles, just as it's still reasonable
to encourage people to spell correctly.

In his original post, Mr. Wright apologized for potentially starting an
MUA or quoting flamewar. I don't think he anticipated starting a
flamewar flamewar.

-- 
"I tried snorting coke once, but the bubbles went right up my nose and I
knocked the glass over."   -- 'Sordid Confessions of a Teenage Innocent'
http://surreal.istic.org/        Spoiler: 'Twas beauty killed the beast.
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