Quoting
With participating and threading established, we on the way to having a growing and self-organising knowledge-base. Quoting improves the quality of each post in the knowledge-base.
This page has explanations of:What Quoting Is
Quoting is the practice of clearly showing the minimum amount of text from a message that you are replying to.The Benefits of Quoting
When you open a post, you should see valuable knowledge as quickly and clearly as possible. The way to achieve this is to think about it when you make posts. It will be facilitated by posts that are clearly and economically written.It should also be easy to search the knowledge-base for specific for items at any time in the future. This means that every post that appears in your search results has a unique item in it on the topic you are searching for.
If we leave previous messages at the bottoms of our replies, all the duplicates will come up in search results making it harder to find what you are looking for.
Quoting enables one person to reply to another person’s (or people’s) post in detail and point by point.
Searching
Most email clients (and the GroupSense List Server Web User Interface) enable you to search the archives of a list for a text-string. The search function usually appears as "Search" or "Find" on the Edit or Tools menu of email client software.Quoting Conventions
There are two widely used conventions for quoting. The first (and the method recommended by GroupSense) uses a feature of most email packages which puts a ">" sign at the beginning of every line when you reply to an email. The ">" sign denotes the text of another person's email that you are replying to. Text that does not directly relate to your reply is deleted.The other method is to include the entire message you are replying to at the bottom of your email. GroupSense does not recommend this method for well structured email-based group interaction. It can mean emails get larger and larger but doesn't provide a clear way to see how people are relating with one another.
Quoting with ">" signs can be a powerful tool as it shows clearly how small contributions from one person produce reactions in another. It can make the process of a group arriving at shared understanding self-evident as the words of the participants mingle.
Here is an example of quoting in an email:
To: Support (support@lists.groupsense.co.nz)
From: Frances (frances@domain.com) Sent: 3 April 1998 Subject: re: setting up debtors in the SystemHi all
Sue asked:
>> do I need to bother setting up all my clients as >> debtors in the System?and Ben replied:
> yes, but it isn’t hard to do
Ben, you are right but at the same time, it depends on how many invoices
you send out per month. If you only send a small number, it may be easier to track them without using the computer at all.regards
Frances
Guidelines for Quoting
The rules of Quoting are:- write economically and clearly
- when replying, delete all the quoted text apart from the specific part you are replying to
- mark the specific text you are replying to clearly using the ">" signs and indicating, if necessary whose words you are quoting
- treat the words of others with respect (ie don't change them without declaring that you have done so)
- if quoting more than one "level" deep (ie replying to a reply), label the quotes so it is clear whose words they are
Quoting works best when your email client is configured as follows:
- each line ends at 72 characters long
- prefix each line of replies with "> "
- text format is Plan Text or Rich Text Format (RTF) but not HTML
Links on other Sites
- HOWTO Edit Messages -- Message Editing and Quoting Guide (with Examples) -- this is a useful (if slightly didactic) guide to formatting emails effectively, especially when using email for "real work"