nothing unfamiliar about my face, either from the top or the bottom...or so
her in doors tells me....

OH and Steve I'll only post serious replies when it hasn't allready been
covered by some one, other wise Im just here for the "miniship" and a great
place to get to know other Mini fans from across the globe....

"Ian Dalziel" <iandalziel (AT) lineone (DOT) net> wrote

sorry ian but is also crossposted to alt.autos.mini
makka
"Ian Dalziel" <iandalziel (AT) lineone (DOT) net> wrote

ian please do not try to flame me as i have not done anything to you and by
rubbishing me you are looking for a flame war and beleive me i have no
problem with this as i like to arguee just for the hell of it
makka
"Ian Dalziel" <iandalziel (AT) lineone (DOT) net> wrote

"Andy Luckman" <me8 (AT) privacy (DOT) net> wrote


Graeme

"k" <cowpoke (AT) btinternet (DOT) com> wrote


1 to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been changed
14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light
bulb could have been changed differently
7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs
27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs
53 to flame the spell checkers
41 to correct spelling/grammar flames
6 to argue over whether it's "lightbulb" or "light bulb" ... another
6 to condemn those 6 as anal-retentive
2 industry professionals to inform the group that the proper term is "lamp"
15 know-it-alls who claim *they* were in the industry, and that "light bulb"
is perfectly correct
156 to email the participant's ISPs complaining that they are in violation
of their "acceptable use policy"
109 to post that this forum is not about light bulbs and to please take this
discussion to a lightbulb forum
203 to demand that cross posting to hardware forum, off-topic forum, and
lightbulb forum about changing light bulbs be stopped
111 to defend the posting to this forum saying that we all use light bulbs
and therefore the posts *are* relevant to this forum
306 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy
the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique
and what brands are faulty
27 to post URL's where one can see examples of different light bulbs
14 to post that the URL's were posted incorrectly and then post the
corrected URL's
3 to post about links they found from the URL's that are relevant to this
group which makes light bulbs relevant to this group
33 to link all posts to date, quote them in their entirety including all
headers and signatures, and add "Me too"
12 to post to the group that they will no longer post because they cannot
handle the light bulb controversy
19 to quote the "Me too's" to say "Me three"
4 to suggest that posters request the light bulb FAQ
44 to ask what is a "FAQ"
4 to say "didn't we go through this already a short time ago?"
143 to say "do a Google search on light bulbs before posting questions about
light bulbs"
1 forum lurker to respond to the original post 6 months from now and start
it all over again

In article <QtmXa.15$cP2.4 (AT) newsfep3-gui (DOT) server.ntli.net>, Phil Howard
<URL:mailtohil_howard (AT) ntlworld (DOT) com> wrote:

As WHAT? You haven't provided us any context.


Well where else would it start? The idea is that you START at the top,
TRIMMING to context as you make your comments.

Which is why you TRIM TO CONTEXT. There is no need for you to leave all the
previous irrelevance flowing in the wake of your one-liner. To do so merely
displays either extreme ignorance, or total contempt for others who have to
pay to download it.

Ah, so it's extreme ignorance in your case. How about when previous
articles are either propogated differently, fail to arrive or someone has
just joined the thread?

Usenet is a communications medium. If you want to communicate, the advice is
to make it clear and concise if you want the best (relevant) response.
Please yourself how you post, but don't be surprised when your posts are
skipped over or killfiled by those best placed to help.

See if this makes it clearer:

[Credits: John Temperley uk.t.m. 11.03.03]

Top-posting makes posts incomprehensible.

Firstly: In normal conversations, one does not answer to something
that has not yet been asked. So it is unclear to reply to the top,
whilst the original message is at the bottom.

Secondly: In western society a book is normally read from top to
bottom. Top-posting forces one to stray from this convention: Reading
some at the top, skipping to the bottom to read the question, and
going back to the top to continue. This annoyance increases even more
than linear with the number of top-posts in the message. If someone
replies to a thread and you forgot what the thread was all about, or
that thread was incomplete for some reasons, it will be quite tiresome
to rapidly understand what the thread was all about, due to bad
posting and irrelevant text which has not been removed.

The idea is that you scroll down through the message, deleting parts
which are not relevant to your reply (called "snipping"), then adding
your reply in the correct context so it can be understood which part
of the post you are replying to, and other people can comment on your
reply keeping the context correct.

Because it is proper Usenet Etiquette. Check out the following URL:
http://www.usenet.org.uk/ukpost.html#s3

If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
summarise the original at the top of the message, or include just
enough text of the original to give a context. This will make sure
readers understand when they start to read your response. Since
Usenet, especially, is proliferated by distributing the postings from
one host to another, it is possible to see a response to a message
before seeing the original. Giving context helps everyone. But do not
include the entire original!

Top-posting inevitably leads to long posts, because most top-posters
leave the original message intact. All these long posts not only
clutter up discussions, but they also clutter up the server space.
Assume that there are only 1000 news servers carrying
this group, if you fail to trim 1kb of text from your post,
that is 1Mb of space you have personally wasted due to your laziness.
Now have 20,000 readers, you have just wasted 20 megabytes
of other people's download time and disk space because you didn't see
why you had to scroll through and trim unwanted posts.

Now have everyone in the newsgroup doing that - say 500 posts a day,
each wasting 20MB - that's 10 gigabytes wasted per day. 300 gigs a
month. 3.6 Terabytes a year.

Many people (particularly on a mobile phone group) have to pay for
their Internet access by the minute, often using a low speed
connection, and/or by the amount of data transferred (GPRS). It costs
them money to download "unnecessary" material.

Is a few seconds of your time more important than the time and
resources possibly wasted on other people's systems by some people not
adhering to conventions and trimming their material?

http://fmf.fwn.rug.nl/~anton/topposting.html
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/gey_chr0.htm
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/gey_stv0.htm
http://www.geocities.com/nnqweb/nquote.html
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting.html
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt
http://www.jsiinc.com/newsgroup_document.htm
http://www.malibutelecom.fi/yucca/usenet/brox.html
http://www.newsreaders.com/
http://www.planefacts.ndirect.co.uk/group/advice/
http://www.plig.net/nnq/nquote.html
http://www.star-one.org.uk/computer/format.htm
http://www.usenet.org.uk/ukpost.html#s3
http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/http/quote.html

Get your OE fixed here;

http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/quotefix.php


--
AJL Electronics (G6FGO) : Satellite and TV aerial systems
http://www.classicmicrocars.co.uk : http://www.ajlelectronics.co.uk