Subject:
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Re: Quoted/non-quoted ratio
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.general
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Date:
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Thu, 14 Jan 1999 06:26:07 GMT
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Reply-To:
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beaker@=stopspammers=pobox.com
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Viewed:
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1956 times
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Also sprach Todd Lehman:
: How does it identify quoted stuff? Does it correctly handle >, |, +, and :
: in all cases? (Not everyone uses >, unfortunately.)
Good point. But '>' is not entirely standard. tin is about as
venerable a newsreader as you can mention, and it's 'standard' setting
is ':' (thus my quoting character)
: http://www.lugnet.com/news/display.cgi?lugnet.admin.general:762
Doesn't really count. There are three quoted lines and nine unquoted
lines. Sigs and blank lines count:)
: http://www.lugnet.com/news/display.cgi?lugnet.admin.general:736
Again, seven to five.
: http://www.lugnet.com/news/display.cgi?lugnet.admin.general:647
This one is marginal, but the sig saves it.
The problem with this is that any arbitrary line you draw will exclude
some legitimate posts. The goal here is obvious; you want to prevent
posts that quote fifty or sixty lines of text in order to say 'me too'
... this is obnoxious, but it would require AI to filter it effectively
without stepping on legitimate posts. I can think of a number of
situations where quoting 50 or 60 lines would be appropriate. Trying to
set a percentage, say, quoted text can amount to no more than 1.5x the
original text, will run into similar problems.
I've always felt that trying to enforce this particular item of
netiquette causes more problems than it solves. For example, the very
same people who are likely to quote an entire article to post a one-line
response are the same people who, when confronted with a message that
their post has been rejected due to quoted text, will just go back and
add 70 or 80 blank lines. You gain nothing.
/ _ _ / _ _ "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a
()(-(//((-/ member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
- Mark Twain
============= Jim Baker -- Weather Weasel Extraordinaire ==============
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Quoted/non-quoted ratio
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| (...) Well put. And good documentation for the record. :) It's an extremely difficult problem to solve correctly in a completely mechanized way. My questions to Matt were designed to highlight the difficulties and I hope it didn't seem like I was (...) (26 years ago, 14-Jan-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Quoted/non-quoted ratio
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| (...) How does it calculate the sizes of the two halves? Lines? Bytes? Non-whitespace characters? In practice, does it encourage things like large signature files and fluff-filling to get around the rule? How does it identify quoted stuff? Does it (...) (26 years ago, 14-Jan-99, to lugnet.admin.general)
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