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Friends and fellow Linux lovers, 

Please please please trim replies.  The point of quoting messages is
to provide context, and you completely defeat the purpose when you
quote the entire message, not to mention waste bandwidth.  It is also
a nuisance for people who read e-mail in a standard 80x24 terminal
window to have to scroll down through several pages of quoted content
that adds nothing to the discussion in order to read the actual
message content.

The message to which this is a reply contained 43 lines, from the
attribution to the end of the message content (not counting any
signature).  8 out of those 43 lines were new content, and 4 of those
8 new lines were blank.  One of those non-blank lines was the
attribution.  3 out of 43 lines was new content that actually added to
the discussion.  The comments provided were relevant to at most only 4
lines of the quoted message, and two would probably have been
sufficient to convey the context.  Out of 43 lines, less than 25% of
them were actually useful in promoting the discussion.  The rest just
wasted bandwidth.  Overquoting does not promote communication or
understanding; and for those who need it, archives of this mailing
list exist, and can be found by visiting its web site.

A great guide to appropriate use of quoting is the following web
document:

  http://www.webfoot.com/advice/email.context.html?Email

If you regularly find yourself posting messages where more than 50% of
the message posted is quoted text, then please read the above, and
follow its guidelines.

If you are using MS-Outlook, which by default provides a very poor
mechanism for quoting text, please be aware that this mode of quoting
is considered highly deprecated, and see the following web page and
follow its directions to configure Outlook to quote properly:

  http://www.slipstick.com/mail1/quote.htm

Also for outlook users, if your messages are wrapping lines at greater
than 80 colums, or not wrapping at all, please see the following link
to configure Outlook to wrap lines properly:

  http://www.slipstick.com/mail1/quote.htm

Pretty, pretty please!

My sincere thanks.


- -- 
Derek Martin               [EMAIL PROTECTED]    
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