parsing text

[Doug]

<snip a whole load of tosh>

This is absolutely hilarious, guys. Keep it up!

 

[CBFalconer]

I'm a regular user of this and many other groups, and I've never
heard of this so-called common convention before.


Fair enough, if the context and attributions aren't germane.


I strongly disagree with this. You have no way to know the
retention of your readers' newsreaders or servers, and parent
articles may be long gone. And expecting me to fire up another
app and run another search is absurd.

Or never present. I consider that attributions should ONLY be
eliminated when all material from that poster is removed. The
lines can be edited, as long as the name remains. The high cost is
one line per contributor.

--
<http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt>
<http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/423>
<http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit043.html>

"A man who is right every time is not likely to do very much."
-- Francis Crick, co-discover of DNA
"There is nothing more amazing than stupidity in action."
-- Thomas Matthews

 

[Richard Bos]

Come on, Richard - you did snip an attrib, now, didn't you?

Of course. I usually only include the attribution of the article I'm
replying to. And that is a common Usenet convention that regular
users should be used to.[/QUOTE]

News to me. It's come into vogue recently with the brokenness of Google
Groups Beta, but apart from that I've always considered it an inferior
form of quoting.

Richard