--- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > Again, the "top three" account for a third > of all posts. And again, they'll take no > notice of this. So far in November, they > account for 47% of all posts made.
"So far in November" represents a grand total of a day and a half. Couple of points here. First, this is obviously atypical; it's a function of the fact that a hot political topic came up, and all three of us have a particular interest in politics. Second, when several people who have an interest in a topic happen to be reading and replying to posts at the same time, you have a situation in which the conversations on that topic are taking place almost in real time, as in a chat room, so there are many more posts than usual from these participants over a relatively short span. And finally, an unrelated point: Barry has been reminded several times now that many if not most of our posts are *short*. If there were a way to count the number of words each poster contributes, our totals would likely be a whole lot closer to Barry's. Actually it isn't entirely unrelated. Barry is fixated on number of posts as a percentage of the total, but that's a rather artificial way of evaluating a poster's output and the quality of their contribution to the forum. And one more thing: If I were a newbie casing the joint, I would be more quickly discouraged by the lazy way many posts here are formatted; sloppy formatting makes it very hard for a newbie to get a good picture of what's going on. And it's not just newbies; I suspect there's a certain level of frustration for regular posters as well. Excessive quoting is a big problem. It's a pain in the neck to have to scroll down endlessly to find a single original line at the bottom of a post. Long line lengths that force the last word or two down to a new, very short line make posts very difficult to read, especially as they get quoted. And a couple of posters--Vaj for one--use email programs that for some reason *double-space* what is being quoted. A prolonged exchange becomes almost totally unreadable when these three problems are combined. And then several posters' messages somehow manage to move the right margin out beyond the message window (this has been the case with Peter's posts recently), making it necessary to scroll every line horizontally, in addition to vertically. Some of these problems may cause more trouble on this rotten Yahoo Web interface, but if it's newbies we're so worried about, they're likely to be sampling the forum on the Web page before they decide to subscribe. In any case, they're all pretty easily fixed. Snip your quotes; use short lines, even if it means you can't use word wrap; set your email program to single-space; and adjust your right margin. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
