Day, Wally wrote:
> Perhaps some of the bickering and misunderstandings would go away if everyone would quit hitting reply and copying entire threads into each post.
>
>   

What would be lost and what would be gained if one had to both never be 
disagreeable and always carefully post in a way that the 
misunderstandings with everyone with their own personal assumptions 
would be minimized?  Someone is always going to disagree with you 
regardless, so it's better to say what you mean and mean what you say 
than to "qualify" your speech to the lowest common denominator.  Most of 
the personal learning IMO occurs when people who disagree make their 
cases, either politically correctly or not.

> Here's a suggestion - your reply should be longer than whatever text passage you are quoting. If you quote a message that already quotes a prior message (which quotes something else, which quotes something else, ad naseum); clean up old text that is no longer relevant.
>
> Thanks for your support
>
>   
I disagree 100%.  If my reply doesn't happen to need to be longer, but I 
wish to be short and too the point, then I'll do that every time.  I may 
or may not edit posts to make them shorter.   People who read posts need 
to manage their reading, I'm not going to do it.  I choose what I wish 
to send and they choose what they wish to read.  If one "chooses" to 
read posts for example with a slow or small device, then they have to 
accept the limits of their choice.  I'm not necessarily going to manage 
my writing to the worst level of network connectivity or the lower 
quality email programs.  If someone chooses to read in digest form, they 
have to accept the limits of their choice.

Steve