In reply to Gerrit and Ray:
It's clear that Jack would not have defended his position with such enthusiasm if no one had answered.
Correct. My remark about excessive posting was not limited to Jack.
Most keyboards have a feature which is consistent
with >having a life. It's the delete button. Some of us are >even so advanced that we can delete several messages >at once. :-)
Don't complain about messages; the subject is clear, you know what thread it's a part of, and you are very welcome to delete any message you like.
With the enormous output of mails some participants produce here and the impossibility of reading all of them, important arguments can be overlooked easily. On top of that, the arguments of members who don't have the time to write a dozen or more e-mails per day are sometimes drowned out by an overly productive minority.
I've sure heard about that delete button but I think it can't replace a sound culture of discussion. In an oral conversation you can't talk 80% of the time. Here, I sometimes get the impression that some people believe the more (and the longer) e-mails they write, the more right they are.
Sorry, I just needed to get rid of this.
Have a nice weekend!
Arbeo
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I've sure heard about that delete button but I think it can't replace a sound culture of discussion. In an oral conversation you can't talk 80% of the time. Here, I sometimes get the impression that some people believe the more (and the longer) e-mails they write, the more right they are.
Arbeo
I second this. Sometimes discussions are ended this way before most people even found out it had started. It is not necassary in a discussion to immediately respond to every mail another person writes within 10 seconds of the mail arriving in your inbox. Waiting 24 hours never hurts!
Waerth/Walter
Walter van Kalken wrote:
I've sure heard about that delete button but I think it can't replace a sound culture of discussion. In an oral conversation you can't talk 80% of the time. Here, I sometimes get the impression that some people believe the more (and the longer) e-mails they write, the more right they are.
I second this. Sometimes discussions are ended this way before most people even found out it had started. It is not necassary in a discussion to immediately respond to every mail another person writes within 10 seconds of the mail arriving in your inbox. Waiting 24 hours never hurts!
The 24-hour wait is a reality in a world-wide project where we all live in different time zones. Those in your own time zone can respond quickly, but those on the other side of the world won't see your message until tomorrow.
Ec
With the enormous output of mails some participants produce here and the impossibility of reading all of them, important arguments can be overlooked easily. On top of that, the arguments of members who don't have the time to write a dozen or more e-mails per day are sometimes drowned out by an overly productive minority.
It's called "skimming". You skim an e-mail to see if you care at all. If you don't, just delete it and move on. While it may not be possible to read all the e-mails, it's certainly possible to skim all of them.
And, if you've gotten tired of a particular thread or person, you can just stop all of those particular e-mails.
I've sure heard about that delete button but I think it can't replace a sound culture of discussion. In an oral conversation you can't talk 80% of the time. Here, I sometimes get the impression that some people believe the more (and the longer) e-mails they write, the more right they are.
And who might that be? I think it has more with a desire to respond to ALL the messages on a topic, rather than a belief that more e-mails makes you more right, which it obviously does not.
Mark
PS
Geritt said something earlier, presumably jokingly, about an all-caps signature. The purpose of that is that miniscule letters were not used in ancient Rome. Thus, "QVANTUM" in my signature rather than "Quantum". I'm pretty sure that in situations like that (ie, sociolinguistic authenticity), all-caps are considered acceptable by the general public.
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