There ya have it from bv.

Thanks for the good humor, yap!

"No Anchovies, Please"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-10-11 15:59 by Elmo Lewis.

Ooooops! Double post.

"No Anchovies, Please"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-10-11 16:00 by Elmo Lewis.

Please don't post the same post twice!! ha ha lol

bv Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If you produce more than 10-20 lines of text,
> nobody will read it.
> And if you have a message in all that text, nobody
> will see it.

Sounds like the motto from some hip business seminar.

> Most people read 10-20 lines max.
> Some read 5-10 lines only.
> After that they get bored.

I don't like your attitude towards the readers of your forum. We actually do have a longer attention span than you think. We're not all TV generation.

Of course it depends who writes and what is written and how it's written. Short messages are not per se better or more meaningful than long messages, not even if they are only read by the illiterates.

Sadly, Bjornulf is probably right about our attention spans. I usually am in a hurry and don't read the really long posts.......I do make exceptions for essays by beelyboy and turd on the run...

That wasn´t the issue, was it? Long posts is one thing, but this was about copying earlier posts in your own one. Otherwise, I agree with you all, as usual.

I am talking from experience.
Two weeks ago I sent an e-mail to my collegues.
It had more than 100 lines,
and more than 3 topics in the same e-mail.
Yesterday we had a meeting.
I mentioned topic number two in my e-mail.
Nobody in that sales team of four people had seen it.
My collegues are hard working and intelligent,
but like most other people they are busy.

If you overload your message with too much talk
then nobody cares, except for your biggest fans.
This is not something I think,
it is something I do know for a fact.
I work with communication.
That is my proffession.
I have already written too many lines here.
Half of my audience have skipped into the next post.
Not a guess but a fact.
I do know this. I have measures. Quantified.
The simple message is: Please do NOT quote.

PS. A love letter or a show report from Argentina
or details about Keith's guitars may go on endless
for pages and pages because people do care,
but the color of Garth Brooks trousers?
Make it short. One line. Or just skip it.
It is all about level of importance.
For the given audience.

Bjornulf

bv Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If you produce more than 10-20 lines of text,
> nobody will read it.
> And if you have a message in all that text, nobody
> will see it.
>
> Most people read 10-20 lines max.
> .........................................Thats as far as I could make it!

> The simple message is: Please do NOT quote.

Or:

Don't quote more than you write by yourself. And quote only when relevant.

Sometimes quoting is necessary since in this forum it's often not clear which posting is answered. Other forums have a possibility to answer directly to a certain post and it will show in the thread list, have a look at [digg.com] for an example. However, good quoting must be learned.

Quoting one or two lines is smart.
Quoting entire posts makes no sense.
Make it easy to understand and read.

Bjornulf

Don't tell me what to do

bv I did read all of your message and agree.

Just one little Question.

Why is there a Quote the message button that automatically copies the whole message?.

I disagree. There needs to be a reference point to a comment. Sometimes the new post is pages late responseo an earlier message.

Makes the computer run slower, too!

"No Anchovies, Please"

In email, and elsewhere, from the early days of the www, there was a convention I recall that anything longer than one screen would not usually be read. Of course, size of print is very small here. :-)

madmaxx makes a good point that the "quote this message" button may encourage rampant quoting.of the entire previous message, which seems quite unnecessary to me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-10-14 03:58 by angee.

madmaxx Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Why is there a Quote button that
> automatically copies the whole message?.

Because it's up to you to delete the non relevant (useless information, supposed to drive my imagination)
you dig?

I dig.

But when someone is new in a hurry or lazy it all falls apart.

Easier if the posts are numbered and Quote Message just gives you user name and post number.

>>But when someone is new in a hurry or lazy it all falls apart. <<

if you're in a hurry - why not capture the sentence in a one swipe and put those darts around 'em?
that's what I learned of our good Ms. with sssoul.
the one who wrote it will be attracted, all others will know someone wrote it somewhere above.

Lazy? hmm - yeah, i've seen a lot... Tim do you read me?

I also post on a pure technical board.
It's law that you don't make a full quote - if you do, you risk getting banned.
that is because it's so technical, you can only contribute to the discussion if you've followed the above mentioned.

which brings me to your other statement, Madmaxx.
>>Easier if the posts are numbered and Quote Message just gives you user name and post number.<<

This is a linear message board - I personally like it that way - and I guess a lot of other folks also do.
one has to live with it that a stray message comes inline, but it also goes to show that it's irrelevant as the topic continues...

...or it's a true hijack

it's easy to address a previous poster, like:
@Madmaxx

still dig?