Re: OT Order yours today!

If that's the case, then there would've never been a thread arguing
whether top-posting or bottom-posting is right or wrong. And THAT, my
friend, is probably the longest-running thread in the history of
usenet. So it's pretty doubtful it was designed the way you say...

And yes - I set my newsreader to ditch the old posts when I check for
new ones... otherwise I'd have a zillion headers and wouldn't see the
one's that I want to read.

And then there's the guys who just joined a thread and never got the
original post (I believe you said a news-server should keep several
days worth... I believe it's actually set to keep a quantity too. but
since most threads go much longer than a few days, well, ok then).

Paul


On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 01:29:29 GMT, Steve Turner
<bbqboyee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Frisco wrote:
>> I use Forte Agent, a very fine newsreader, and when I downlead today's
>> headers, yesterdays have already disappeared - so I don't see the
>> thread unless you quote it or it was posted right beforehand.
>
>First of all, the presence (or absence) of the message *headers* on your
>local machine is a function of the newsreader, and is independent of
>whether the messages themselves still exist on the server. My
>newsreader (Thunderbird) can keep the message headers around
>indefinitely, which allows you to see the structure of the discussion
>thread long after the messages themselves have been purged from the
>server. If your newsreader is purging yesterday's headers before the
>messages themselves have disappeared from the server, I would argue that
>your newsreader is broken or misconfigured.
>
>Secondly, if your news server only keeps one day's worth of messages
>available then you're using a crappy news server, plain and simple. The
>amount of space available on the server usually dictates how quickly
>they get pruned, and guess what? If people would cut out all of the
>superfluous *quoting* then the servers wouldn't fill up so quickly and
>the threading facility could work the way it was designed.
>
>> It's
>> just proper etiquette to include partial history when replying to
>> someone else's previous post.
>
>This "proper etiquette" of which you speak is exactly contrary to the
>way the system was originally designed, and it has only gotten worse
>through the years as more and more people (along with their crappy or
>misconfigured newsreaders) have misused the system to the point where
>very few now understand how it was *supposed* to work.
>
>The ONLY reason to quote a post in its entirety is to guard against the
>possibility that the post to which yours refers *might* be pruned
>prematurely. That's a pretty friggin' weak argument for quoting a
>thousand line post and adding "I agree".
>
>Selective (and judicious!) quoting to address individual points of a
>previous post has of course always been considered "proper etiquette".

.

Relevant Pages

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