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Mailing List Moderation Policy

by October

Overquoting results whenever a post has a lot of extra, already-posted text included in it such as other people's signatures,

> 
> 
> 
> Love always,
> Uncle Joe
> ------------------------------
>"The measure of a good poster is economy." - Belle Postyr
>Send me an email! unclejoe@domain.com

unsubscribe blocks:

> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> To signoff, mail LISTSERV@LISTS.ADF.ORG with "unsubscribe ADF-XXXXXX"
> (no quotes) in the body. See http://www.adf.org/forums/subscribe.html
> for subscription information. Questions? Mail ADF-Listmaster@ADF.ORG
> List archives are at http://lists.adf.org/archives/adf-XXXXXXXX.html

and, the most dire, an entire digest's worth of posts. The way it usually happens is when someone responds to a post by hitting their "Reply" or "Reply to All" button. While there's nothing wrong with using "Reply", subscribers have to keep in mind that this copies the entire previous message into your reply email.

Why is overquoting a problem? Good question. Overquoted posts are

...hard for others to read
...a waste disk space (companies/organizations have to pay to store their archives)

So, a new subscriber might well ask, "How do I fix this?" It's easy - 2 seconds work, and nothing to be scared of. Here's how:

First, take a look at an "unedited" post -

----------------

To: ADF-XXXXXX List
From: John Public
Subject: Re: Lecture on Markovian Dissonance Theory

I hope everything turned out ok for Jim and Dana. I felt the same way,
Shirley. Your post was very insightful - thank you!

Sincerely,
John

----------ORIGINAL MESSAGE
> To: ADF-XXXXX List
> From: Shirley Lewis
> Subject: Lecture on Markovian Dissonance Theory
> 
> Then I remarked how this was just a fallacy of his original
> argument.  Well, Jim and Dana were at the lecture with me, and had a
> bit of an emergency and had to go. Sadly, they missed the best part
> of all the discussion. When he remarked how everyone understood this
> theory to be "self-evident", I raised my hand and remarked that it
> was only self evident if one had studied under his set of theories;
> the rest of us still need some convincing.
>
> Well, that about wraps it up -- all in all, I left the symposium
> unmoved.
>
> Yours,
> Shirley
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> To signoff, mail LISTSERV@LISTS.ADF.ORG with "unsubscribe ADF-XXXX"
> (no quotes) in the body. See http://www.adf.org/forums/subscribe.html
> for subscription information. Questions? Mail ADF-Listmaster@ADF.ORG
> List archives are at http://lists.adf.org/archives/adf-warriors.html

Almost everything after the "ORIGINAL MESSAGE" line is completely unnecessary because 1) the other lists subscribers have already seen Shirley's post, and 2) John is responding to only two things in Shirley's email: Jim and Dana's emergency, and the fact that Shirley was left unconvinced by the speaker's argument.

So, how should this look? This is a more economical way of posting the same thing:

------------
To: ADF-XXXXXX List
From: John Public
Subject: Re: Lecture on Markovian Dissonance Theory

Shirley wrote:
> Well, Jim and Dana were at the lecture with me, and had a bit of an
> emergency and had to go. Sadly, they missed the best part of all the
> discussion.
> Well, that about wraps it up -- all in all, I left the symposium
> unmoved.

I hope everything turned out ok for Jim and Dana. I felt the same way,
Shirley. Your post was very insightful -- thank you!

Sincerely,
John
------------

Very clean, easily read, and to the point. Now readers of John's message won't wonder what John's message is, and the conversation at hand can move along.

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About the Author - October is the ADF Listmaster. He has been a list administrator for a little over a decade in the areas of software design, gaming, mental health, and healthcare informatics. October is a member of Wild Onion Grove, ADF in Chicago, and has been a humble student of Paganism for over twenty years. [all articles by October]