civility: does it have anything to do with netiquette?

[Kurt Cockrum]

After 3 or 4 ping-pong-style long replies to long postings, each e-mail
on this list (as on most I'm subscribed to) is carrying a considerable
load of historical baggage, specifically everything that has been
previously appended to previous replies.  You can identify this when
you see lines in your e-mail that begin with "> > > >..." and similar
patterns.  It's time to *delete* that old garbage *before* you send it,
so other people (some of whom have *saved* the old stuff, and hence have
no *need* of an immediate reminder) aren't bothered.

I'm not saying that we should stop quoting stuff in our replies.  I am
saying that it ought to be edited, so that *all* extraneous stuff is
trimmed out.  Particularly, edit out the .sigs!  Nobody wants to see
that crap, especially recycled.

Really, folks, if you are going to use e-mail, take the trouble to learn
to use it effectively.  You are like a bunch of technophobic enviros
worried about global warming, but driving stick-shift cars stuck in
1st gear because you don't know how to work the tranny/clutch combo.
Read and learn your help screens!

E-mail trainers, how about getting on this?  It isn't enough to just
teach people how to step-on-the-pedal and go, you should be teaching
people what good practice is.  Maybe you do that already, for all I know.
But if so, none of your graduates have subscribed to this list.

With regard to civility on this list, poor manners bother me a *lot*
less than the ham-handed efforts of well-intentioned people to *deal*
with bad manners, i. e. to be seen *doing* *something* by others (contra
the Taoistic philosophy of "wu-wei", doing nothing).  Composing long lists
of elaborate rules of punctilio exemplify this.  "There oughta be a law".
And it *always* turns out worse than coping with the original problem.
Look at Singapore, or some of the civic policies of the City of Seattle.

Lastly, thin-skinned, hypersensitive people are a pain-in-the-butt!
Toughen up!  and lighten up!
--kurt
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