cutting up a post

[Amedee Van Gasse (ub)]

On Sun, October 25, 2009 20:32, David Gerard wrote:
> 2009/10/25 Robert Holtzman <holtzm at cox.net>:
>> On Sun, 25 Oct 2009, Douglas Pollard wrote:
>
>>> Â  Â Been reading the fcc Internet thread as it has evolved and have
>>> noticed a trend. Â  A person goes to the trouble to write a half page
>>> post that is interdependent on ever statement and line in its make up
>>> to
>>> make a point. Â  Then someone else chops it into individual lines or
>>> statement and writes a scathing comment on each part of it. Â This is
>>> only a method to discredit the writer. Â  It is not a comment on the
>
>> I can't tell if you are unhappy with interleaved replies or their
>> content. If it's interleaved replies you object to, be aware that it's
>> one of the email standards.
>
>
> Indeed. I don't think there's an RFC on it, but interleaved replies -
> quote a bit, answer it, quote the next bit - have been usual practice
> in email and on Usenet since before everyone on email was actually on
> the Internet, back in UUCP days - back to the seventies at least.

I agree. Interleaved replies have been part of netiquette since long
before the days of personal computers and broadband (or even dialup)
internet.

That being said, I can understand an objection against interleaving in the
middle of a sentence. That is somtimes (not often!) abused to ridicule the
original author. But there is absolutely no harm in interleaved replies
between paragraphs when they each contain exactly one internally
consistent argument.

My rule of thumb when using interleaved replies is:
* paragraph that I agree with: cut it when I have nothing new to add
* paragraph that I disagree with or that I want to add to: quote the
paragraph and reply

I see an email thread as a collaborative work: we all write together on a
document. A bit like a wiki. If any of you already has Google Wave: it
also works that way. If you look trough all the silly 2.0-ish widgets, you
will see that the workflow of Google Wave looks a lot like a mailinglist
thread.

-- 
Amedee