On 1/13/2012, rb posted:
> The_KiKi posted:
>>>> Uhm, No. I posted directly after you said you did not qualify to answer
>>>> this question, but that does not mean I was asking you. When replying
>>>> to a thread without quoting someone it is implied that the question is
>>>> directed at the Opening Poster, not the person who posted immediately
>>>> beforehand.
> Gene posted:
>> That's a pretty silly rule, IMO, and one that I have never heard of
>> (and would never try to follow). In effect, you are saying that a
>> direct reply to one post is actually a reply to another post if there's
>> no indication of which post the reply belongs to other than the
>> *obvious* one of its position in the thread.
>>
>> Some remarks about quoting that I've seen on a couple of newsgroups
>> recently have said that it's courteous to quote enough of the preceding
>> post to make it clear to any person reading the response what it refers
>> to, and to trim not everything, but only stuff that's *irrelevant* to
>> the reply.
>>
>> If you post without quoting, there's *always* a chance of
>> misinterpretation of what you are referring to, and when the OP is 78
>> days old, it might not even be available to everyone...
>>
>> Just sayin'.
> Dave posted:
>> With close to 20 years on Usenet, I have never heard of that either and
>> one is expected to at least quote relevant sections
> ===============
> Good grief...yes quotes are helpful, but that thread was about as simple
> as they get. A little common sense please....
> Scenario:
> The OP is asking for help. I and a few others, post replies with helpful
> info. Another post is made immediately after mine, in which the poster
> is requesting info about DSL and Vista. I do not have DSL or Vista nor
> did I ask for help, but I'll ignore the fact that the OP mentioned
> having DSL and Vista, and assume the poster is asking me for the info
> because the post follows mine and does not quote text. I'll also add a
> bit of attitude to my post because I am concerned about being courteous
> to other users of the newsgroup. Then even after the poster tells me his
> post was for the OP, I'll insist his post was for me, rather than saying
> 'oops my mistake', and then simply moving on to another thread where I
> could help someone.
It's pretty easy to ignore information that was not quoted, and came
from a post that was about 2-1/2 months old, which, if you can believe
it, is long enough for me to forget what was in it. Also, there was
(obviously) nothing in the reply to indicate which of the other posts
in the thread it referred to. Or even if it happened to be in the right
thread, come to think of it.
If the reply poster can't be more helpful (and, for that matter, just
plain *courteous*) than that, I'm not going to do his work for him by
looking in the thread for what he might be talking about.
I have to say that I'm disappointed in you, rb. ISTM that the least you
could do, if you're going to be indulging in ad hominem attacks, is to
be cogent and interesting :-)
--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)