The first sentence of my post "Re: art of teaching #2" [Hake (2008)] was:
"If you reply to this long (17 kB) post please don't hit the reply
button unless you prune copy of this post that may appear in your
reply down to a few relevant lines, otherwise the entire already
archived post may be needlessly resent to subscribers."
The above sentence prompted Bob LaMontagne (2008) to perversely hit
the reply button so that my entire 17 kB post [Hake (2008] was placed
yet again on the Phys-L archives - this is call "uretsking" - see
e.g., Uretsky (2008).
In his reply Bob three points to which I shall respond:
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1. "Can you explain why you recommend trimming these messages before
replying? With modern computers at home and at our offices, huge
servers hosting message boards, and high speed internet connections,
there appears to be no point to trimming. . . . . ."
Among the reasons that I recommend pruning copies of messages that
may appear when hitting the reply button are:
a. There's no need to include the complete post to which one is
responding. For example, instead of including LaMontagne's Complete
Post (LCP) in this response, the simple reference LaMontagne (2008)
allows subscribers who may be interested to access LCP with the click
of the mouse on
<https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/archives/2008/9_2008/msg00126.html>.
b. Posts repeated ad nauseam in the archives bloat them with
redundant material, diminish their value, and complicate archive
searches.
c. Many discussion list participants subscribe to list Digests
(evidently not available for Phys-L). If subscribers continually
repeat posts, that repeat posts, that repeat posts, that . . . . . .
. . . . . . then Digest subscribers must scroll though pages of
redundant posts to find new material.
d. Not all subscribers are blessed with high-speed internet
connections such that addition of a few extra kB or MB to a post is
nearly irrelevant to transmission or reception times - witness the
post of Woody Malot (2008) who wrote: "Bob, some of us are still
suffering with dial up connections because of the remoteness of our
location. The high speed internet connection is still a dream."
[Woody then seems to contradict his own sentiment by hitting the
reply button so that both LaMontagne's (2008) post and my own post
Hake (2008) are included in his reply!]
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2. "You tend to splatter these emails over a half dozen or so mail
lists at a time. If anyone from a list who just might happen to be
interested in one of these posts and the postings that led up to it,
and the previous postings were trimmed, one would have to take a big
part of their day to find out where the archives of these groups were
stored and search them for related messages."
NONSENSE! To find the archives of over sixty academic discussion
lists simply take a few seconds to click on
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/ADL-L.pdf> (640 kB) to bring up
"Over Sixty Academic Discussion Lists: List Addresses and URL's for
Archives & Search Engines" Hake (2007).
As for "splattering emails over a half dozen or so mail lists at a
time," I ordinarily try for a dozen or two - see Hake (2008). For a
defense of cross posting see "Cross-Posting - Synergistic or Sinful?"
[Hake (2005)].
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3. "So far, I have found none of these postings of interest . . . ."
I can think of no more convincing evidence of the value of my posts! ;-)
"If once a man indulges himself in murder:
very soon he comes to think little of robbery,
and from robbery he next comes to Sabbath-breaking,
and from that to incivility and procrastination . . .
and from that to cross-posting."
With Apologies to Thomas De Quincy (1827)
REFERENCES
De Quincey, T. 1827. "Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts."
Available in a 2004 edition from Kessinger Publishing, Amazon.com
information at <http://tinyurl.com/6nyapy>. Note the "Search Inside"
feature.
Hake, R.R. 2005. "Cross-Posting - Synergistic or Sinful?" Post of 1
Nov 2005 08:37:12-0800 to ITFORUM and AERA-L; online at
<http://tinyurl.com/2m59v4>.