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Jim asked:

> Is there a way to do the postings without repeating all

> messages on a subject each time the subject gets a reply?

 

Jim,

 

Yes, there’s a way.  But it depends on everyone doing a careful job in sending e-mail.  By proper netiquette, every person should always trim away the old message or, even better, set your mail program to just not include the old message in the reply.

 

If you want to include something for clarity, you should cut and paste only the amount you need for clarity, like I did above.

 

To turn off copying the old message into the reply, go into the options on your e-mail program and poke around.  In Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, go to <Tools>, then <Options> then look around.

 

If you just can’t find out how to turn off the auto-copying, with most programs you can just delete all the copied stuff with a few keystrokes.  Before you write your response, you click on the body-text area to get a cursor, then type <cntl-A> to select All the text, then hit <delete>.  That’s all it takes.

 

You’re right, Jim, that quoting the whole message stream to date is really wasteful.  Besides wasting bandwidth, it makes the digest very difficult to read, waste’s the archive’s storage and wastes my storage.  I’m guessing my e-mail storage space is >80% wasted because of this.

 

Another pet peeve is for people to hit <reply-all.>  It’s not necessary to send your reply to the individual AND the list in most cases.  I will do that if I’m giving a reply to a plea for help and I want to make SURE the questioner gets my reply.  But it seems a lot of people hit reply-all all the time and I get two of each message, even the ones where any direct reply should be to Bill Bayne.

 

But virtually always, it’s only necessary to send the reply to the list.  An easy way is click <reply-all> and then delete the individual’s e-mail address leaving only the list one. 

 

I made a contact entry for each list.  One is “cflyin” and the other is “ctech”.  When I reply, I delete the individual’s e-mail address and just type “cf” or “ct” and hit send.  The program’s auto-complete finds the only entries starting with “cf” or “ct,” fills in the address and the send goes out.

 

Thanks for the question, Jim.  I always appreciate an opportunity to rant!

 

Ed Burkhead

http://edburkhead.com

ed -at- edburkhead???.com          (change -at- to @ and remove "???")

 

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