Social Aspects of The Net. If you follow these simple guidelines, you'll be helping everybody to handle their newsreading with a minimum of fuss and frustration. When you follow-up to an article, please edit out everything from the quoted article except the specific points to which you are replying. It can be extremely annoying to see a page or more of quoted text, and then only two original lines at the end of the article. It is almost always possible to get away with quoting much, much less than that.
Many people read news via slow modem lines, or by downloading the articles in bulk.
Excessive quoting costs all of these people both time and money. Please be considerate. If you do quote someone, please include a blank line between the end of the quoted material and your reply. Before you reply to a post, ask yourself whether replying by e-mail will be okay. E-mail replies are especially appropriate for simple messages of congratulation or commiseration for personal events, or welcomes to new patrons.