At 14:13 31/08/09 -0400, Les Schaffer wrote: >Fred: > >you have a habit of attaching the complete text of a web page when you >post to marxmail. the rule is, send a few relevant paragraphs and then a >link to the remainder of the page. That's funny, I never heard that rule mentioned before (but then Louis is still working on the promised list of rules). And it appears a lot of others didn't know it either. I rather disagree with it. Or to be fair, I should ask for the rationale.
I suspect the motivation was to limit the bandwidth of traffic on the list, as has also been cited as one reason for clipping quoted text (which I agree with, but more because it makes the replies easier to read and know what portion is being replied to). It was mentioned that for some people, particularly in places like Cuba where people have slow or costly internet connections, this would save them time and/or money. The problem with that, is that if someone has to go to the webpage to read something, then they use MUCH more bandwidth than if it had just been sent by email. For instance, with Fred's post, the email (as I received it) was 16KB long, whereas the webpage file was 107KB long, and that does NOT include the graphic files which are probably even longer. Granted people can set their browsers to not display pictures though most people don't know how to do that (but they probably do in Cuba). So even in the best case, someone is going to download 7 times as much data to read it from the webpage than if they had just received it in their email. Therefore (if these numbers are typical, which I think they are), I would say that you are only saving them bandwidth if they only want to look at 1 out of 7 articles. Is that worth it then? Further, I for one find it MUCH more convenient to read an article directly from email: 1) Since it is right there and I save a few seconds at least; 2) I can read the article with NO advertising and useless crap on the screen; 3) As one who does not delete emails, having the text of an article on my computer means that I will find it using a search for terms that might be in the text. 4) And although a lot of people may make fun of my "old" computer, I quite often do not have a web browser running (takes a minute to start up) and starting it may overload my system so I need to quit my email first and then go read all the links I had run across. Is this rule really smart? I DO think it is good to always send the URL of the original when it exists. And if you are going to relegate the article to a link, I REALLY think it's good to have a few paragraphs so you can tell where the article is going (but often that isn't sufficient). I really hate it when someone posts ONLY the URL with no other information! But why this rule?? - Jeff >someone asked me offlist why i would remind someone else about the rule >for clipping quoted text and not remind you of the rule for sending >links instead of full copy of a web page. > >so, in order to keep rules consistent and in support of the policy to >make posts as readable as possible, i now ask you to refrain from >posting entire web pages. > >thanks > >Les ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
