First clear message; Was Re: Constitutional...

jf noonan jfn1 at msc.com
Wed Jun 17 08:42:27 PDT 1998


On Wed, 17 Jun 1998, Carrol Cox wrote:


>
> Almost the first post I ever sent to a maillist was a complaint about
> insufficient identification of who said what, and when is the poster
> speaking, etc. The poster of this message seems to have assumed (without
> intending to) that all of us reading the post would have clear printouts
> of all the messages referred to.
>
> I am retired, with lots of spare time, and even I can't keep up with all
> the posts on lbo-talk, so when someone responds without distinguishing
> CLEARLY, at a glance, without thinking, the dramatis personae of his/her
> post, I spend an extra 30 seconds guessing, then delete the post. As I am
> doing with the post quoted above.
>
> I really can't tell whether the poster is agreeing or disagreeing with
> Dan, or with someone else, or what.
>
> Carrol

The only thing worse than the problem you describe is the problem (worse on this list than on any other one I'm on) of MIS-attributing people's words. I'm pretty sure a post I just read had Wojek's words attributed to Yoshie. There's almost one a day of those here. Personally, I blame Bill Gates and that godawful Outlook Express that refuses to do replies correctly and instead sticks the original post and then end of the reply. What Wizard of Redmond came up with that bullshit?

-j

--

Joseph Noonan jfn1 at msc.com



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