On Fri, 05 Jul 2002 11:51:51 -0400
Tom Neff <tneff@grassyhill.net> wrote:
> And I'll just mention that when this subject comes up, we debate it -
> in PLAIN TEXT - without so much as a second thought.
Due to a sequence of accidents I now find myself hand-reformatting and
editing every post to my main list. I fix attributions, reflow
paragraphs, fix quoting errors, trim excessive quotes, lightly edit for
topicality, fix obvious spelling and typo errors, and generally clean up
every message into a common and constant format and condition. Fairly
simply: Every message ends up looking the pretty much the same. Same
margins, same quoting style, same attribution style, same formatting
etc. or to rephrase as one member observed: all individuality in
messages outside of what you actually write is removed.
Asides from the drain on my time this has had positive effects on list
traffic and behaviour, both in regard to depth and focus. It removes
distractions. To an extent posts are no longer interesting -- they're
all the same -- but the content varies and so is interesting. Quoting
one of my lists members:
"...that's why Claw re-formats MD ... to try to make the emails look
prettier so people just don't go and discount everything based on the
typical horrible formatting that emails have."
Note: I've never stated my reasons for doing this.
--
J C Lawrence
---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw@kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
References:
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