Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Adminstrivia: Digest Limits/Netiquette
From: Nick FitzGerald <nick () virus-l demon co uk>
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 14:45:38 +1300
Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu to me:
I'm fully in favour of "quoted-line to new content" ratio moderation.
<<snip>>
You do, of course, realize that sometimes a one-line "read THIS url" suffices?
Yes. And two counter points: 1. Seldom is it close to "necessary" to quote great gobs of preceding text to "make the point" that a particular URL is the answer to all the OP's questions/points/misunderstandings. 2. I did not suggest 50/50 as an _absolute_ guideline. Part of what I originally said that I snipped above was:
or whatever more or less harsh ratio you think is reasonable.
A "reasonable" standard may be something like: 1. Starting with just the message body, strip any .sig (say, all text on and after a line starting "-- "). 2. If the remaining text is 7 (10, 15, whatever the moderators consider a "reasonable" length for a "small message") stop parsing and allow it through. 3. Apply the quoted to unquoted rule to remaining ("large") messages and bounce any that fail. Now, if we think a little about the next thing I said from the text I snipped above:
Messages without "substantial" new content relative to quoted content are generally (like 95-99%) not worth the bandwidth, storage space or deletion time they "consume".
we see there are some "intelligent" things the list admins can do that to (greatly?) improve the s/n ratio...
That's when you start seeing slash-dot style padding that's there just to make more new lines than original. Now I've got a 50/50 ratio. Barely.
If a quoted/unquoted rule is put in place and the above happens a lot then the admins might reasonably decide to simply add a "normalize text to 66 char margins" type step before apply the quoting rule. Anyway, the point of such a "rule" is to prevent the "me too", "you're ugly", "hey stupid" etc, etc, etc messages that are (usually) top-posted over an entire copy of a message that was (often) overly long and largely worthless in the first place. Such replies mainly come to the list because of the morons who don't realize that "reply all" is something you use on special occasions rather than as your standard reply option. Such a "rule" will not prevent the ardent idiots, intent on being heard regardless, but we have other methods (such as end-user filtering) for dealing with them if they become too bothersome. Regards, Nick FitzGerald _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
Current thread:
- Adminstrivia: Digest Limits/Netiquette Len Rose (Jun 26)
- Re: Adminstrivia: Digest Limits/Netiquette Nick FitzGerald (Jun 26)
- RE: Adminstrivia: Digest Limits/Netiquette Curt Purdy (Jun 27)
- Re: Adminstrivia: Digest Limits/Netiquette Valdis . Kletnieks (Jun 27)
- Re: Adminstrivia: Digest Limits/Netiquette Roy S. Rapoport (Jun 27)
- Re: Adminstrivia: Digest Limits/Netiquette Troy (Jun 27)
- Re: Adminstrivia: Digest Limits/Netiquette Valdis . Kletnieks (Jun 27)
- Re: Adminstrivia: Digest Limits/Netiquette Shawn McMahon (Jun 27)
- Re: Adminstrivia: Digest Limits/Netiquette Nick FitzGerald (Jun 27)
- Re: Adminstrivia: Digest Limits/Netiquette Nick FitzGerald (Jun 26)
- Re: Adminstrivia: Digest Limits/Netiquette Frank Tobin (Jun 27)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- RE: Adminstrivia: Digest Limits/Netiquette Schmehl, Paul L (Jun 27)