[pchelpers] Re: Overquoting
- From: "Ekhart GEORGI (last name last)" <Ekhart.GEORGI@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pchelpers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 04 Feb 2006 11:36:22 +0200
Hi Pen
>> The remainder appeared to be white space (quoted blank lines). The
>> script must be counting them.
>> GTCox wrote:
>>> John, there were only 17 quoted lines in my last post. How come it got
>>> spit out as having 31?
>
>
> HUH? How can it quote something that is blank. I must be dense!
All lines that are quoted have > signs at the beginning. These quote
signs are always visible while composing the message, but they are often
rendered instead as a continuous vertical bar when the message has been
sent and received.
So while composing a message, in order to see how many quoted lines
there are, one just has to count the number of lines with > signs. These
signs are also added at the beginning of empty lines between paragraphs
(to show that this is from the same person) so that these empty lines
are counted as quoted. In addition, all email programs should add an
empty line with a quote sign after the quoted part so that the answer,
which is supposed to come after the quote, doesn't run into the quote.
Most email programs add up these empty quoted lines at the end of the
quote so that when a private email message contains 5 old messages, it
has at least 5 empty quoted lines at the end. In addition, Thunderbird
has an old bug consisting of adding 2 empty lines after the quote
instead of 1.
The way Freelists decides if you're overquoting is that it counts the
number of *consecutive" lines with > signs at the beginning. So you can
actually quote the whole original text as long as you never have more
than 30 *consecutive* lines with > signs.
If email programs didn't add quote signs at the beginning of empty lines
between paragraphs and didn't count these empty lines as part of the
quote, very few messages would be flagged as overquoting (even when they
are quoting three old messages with a total of 200 lines), because very
few people write messages with paragraphs longer than 30 lines. Many
people however accidentally quote the entire message they are responding
to (and even previous ones) because they press the Send button before
reading the whole message they are sending. These are exactly the kind
of messages the Freelists script is trying to prevent to prevent wasting
server space and bandwidth and the time of all the readers of the
mailing list.
The easy way to avoid the problem is to reread one's answer, including
the quoted parts, before sending it, as John's rules suggest. That way
one notices what one is soon making everybody else read too. That way
one also notices if one's answer makes no sense without having to read
the quote, in which case it's better to have the quote first. Otherwise,
one makes everyone first read the incomprehensible answer and then makes
everyone jump down to understand what the answer is referring to and
then makes everyone jump back up and reread the answer up top. Many
people who press the Send button before reading their *entire* message
*including* the usually unnecessary quote at the end, do not realise how
much unnecessary reading and rereading and jumping back and forth they
are causing.
George's answer accidentally and unnecessarily quoted both Cyril's
answer to Scott and Scott's answer to John, which contained a quote from
John.
Here is the quoted part of George's message with numbers and hard
carriage returns instead of only the > signs:
1> Scott
2> Thunderbird works the ame way here. I tried to resend a message that
I sent
3> to a bcc list because I forgot to include the attachment and the
result was
4> the same as Re-Na described.
5>
6> Cy
7>
8>
9> On 2/3/06, Scott McNay <wizard@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
10>>
11>>
12>> Hi John,
13>>
14>> Friday, February 3, 2006, 4:12:30 PM, you wrote:
15>>
16>> JD> What you are describing is caused by the correct functioning of
17>> JD> the BCC (blind carbon copy). It isn't meant to be seen or
18>> JD> captured. One way to
19>>
20>> What she's saying is that it's doing this for an email that SHE just
21>> sent, not one that she received. Therefore the information should be
22>> available.
23>>
24>> --
25>> Scott.
26>>
27>>
28>
29>
30>
It seems that at least one more line was added and that the script is a
bit pedantic in not tolerating even 31 lines. It could also be taught to
not count quoted empty lines at the end. However, my physically carried
out line count shows that the discrepancy was not as bad as George
thought when he thought that his post had only 17 quoted lines.
--
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