replying to posts

["Cepek, Marta" <marta -at- M3ISYSTEMS -dot- QC -dot- CA>]

Scott (and others who are still reposting the entire message they reply to)

This is not a flame.  I'm just asking you to show a little courtesy.

Please stop quoting the entire message you're replying to.

Delete as much of the original message as you can and only leave enough of
the original message to provide a reference as to who/what you are replying to.

For those who must pay for their InterNet connection, there some people who
spend as much as $2 a day (up to $50/month) just for the connect time to
download this list.  You are resending messages everyone's already read in
their entirety.  This is particularly annoying in the "Certification"
thread, where as many as 5-6 messages (essentially, the whole thread) are
being reposted each time.

For those who are short on time or disk space, falling behind on only 1 week
of this list can take up as much as 1 MB on a hard disk.  Then of course,
there's the accidental reposting of the entire digest every once in a while.
 If you consider that each individual message is approximately 1-2K (often
more), it really adds up.  It also makes some people (me) dread having to
wade through all of it in search of the real gems that make all this worthwhile.

For those who subscribe in Digest form, a fast trigger finger on the Delete
key isn't gonna do it.  We have to scroll and scroll and scroll, and hope we
haven't accidentally missed a new post.

It means a lot that we, as professionals, want to discuss issues that
concern our profession and to help each other out with specific problems.
But soon there'll be just too much stuff to wade through, and this forum
won't be useful for anyone because it'll be too big, unless we do our little
part to streamline our contributions.

There are probably something like 1500-2000 people currently subscribing to
this list.  And the list seems to be growing quickly, judging from the
number of "first posts" announced daily.  Only about 150 are posting with
any *real* regularity, and of those, there are about 40 who post just about
every day (everyone knows who *they* are!).  The traffic is going to get
heavier as more and more people get on the information highway.  Let's do
our part to keep it easy to navigate and worthwhile.

Another suggestion, in the case of a specific debate, might be to take the
conversation off-line (private e-mail), and if anything of interest to the
entire list comes of it, to post it to the list after the fact.

I am speaking for myself.  I accept no responsibility for those who agree
with me.
Please address any flames to me, not the list.

Cheers!
Marta
marta -at- m3isystems -dot- qc -dot- ca