On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 09:24 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.

All good suggestions Wally. Those of us who've been on this
list for ten years or so will have noted a shift to 'ease of posting'
at the expense of 'ease of reading' over that period. In the 
mid-1990s the only discussion lists were on Usenet and the
discipline there was extraordinary by today's lax standards.

There are many collections of good rules of netiquette, but
the rule Wally is referring to is not to send anything - not a
single word - that you don't want other people to read. 

Generally only people beginning a thread or those making
detailed replies will have cause to post more than a screenful of text.

The rule about brevity fell into disuse as broadband replaced 
modems, but now that mobile phones are being used to receive
and send text over the internet, there is a new imperative
to keep the length of every message to a minimum.

Keith