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[chox] Reply styles (was: Re: [ox-en] Mail format)



Hi Zbigniew and all!

Last week (9 days ago) Zbigniew Lukasiak wrote:
I personaly find it much more convenient if the text I
read is not interspersed with quotes.

I understand that this is a matter of taste. In a discussion I love to
read the things said as it would happen in an oral communication. IMHO
this is accomplished rather well by an inline quoting style.

What you prefer to me sounds more like giving speeches to each other
and this sounds not very communicative to me. Indeed in some cases
TOFU quoting style feels exactly so to me.

Instead of putting literarily
big chunks of text you can use your own words to describe the points
you are discussing with.

*If* this is done. Usually it's not. It's kind of funny that you just
gave an example for not giving such a summary. Instead you expected
the reader to know the mail and have it in mind. Otherwise your mail
is simply not understandable. It is, however, had you quoted the
snippet you are referring to - which I hope I did below.

More often than not I have a hard time figuring out what the
respective person is referring to. This is especially true for replies
to long posts.

You might lose some prcision - but the
reader would not need to switch context from the original message to
your text.

Ah, I think I understand. For you inline quoting is a switch. For my
reading habits TOFU style is this switch.

Another problem is that in my experience in TOFU style people often do
not reply to essential parts or even to questions.

And for the most part I would say that this is a fair
trade off, I do not propose this as an absolute measure - but rather I
would like to push the balance in this direction.

Fair enough.

It is much easier just to quote the original text without translating
it but it is easier to read the text in one chunk and in the era of
information overload we need to be gentle with the reader.

What may mean different things for different people ;-) .

On 11/3/06, Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de> wrote:
* Put your comments behind the citation you are commenting

  This makes it easier for people to understand what you are referring
  to.

  Also it is generally a bad idea to simply quote the whole mail you
  are citing (called TOFU in German: "Text oben - Fullquote unten").
  Often there are only a few points you are commenting and it saves
  (mental) bandwidth to make this explicit.

  It is particular bad practice to put the quote below your own text
  because people who want to know what you are referring to then need
  to read the mail bottom-up - which is extremely difficult in
  languages using top-down direction.

You quoted my complete mail though I guess you replied only to a small
part of it - namely the part above. Above you said that you prefer
giving a summary. Let's assume you gave a summary: Why then should you
quote the *whole mail*? Why then quote at all? With your concept isn't
quoting obsolete at all then?


Well, I think I understood your point and I understand that there are
different reading habits - and probably writing habits also. *If* your
point with giving a summary is adhered to *and* if the then
superfluous full-quote is omitted then I'd even agree with you that
this is adequate for a different style. However, I guess there needs
to be much education work done until then because AFAICS this is the
rare exception rather than the rule. Until then I'll continue to
prefer the classical interspersed quoting style :-) .


						Mit Freien Grüßen

						Stefan

____________________________________________________
No. It also inflates the mail unnecessarily.
Because it worsens the readability of the text.
Text Oben, Full-Quote Unten.
TOFU.
That's all?
What is wrong with TOFU?
What does TOFU mean?
What is the biggest nuisance with replies?

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