Replies

Newsgroups are not email, although on the surface they appear to have many similarities. An email is sent to one or more people where it is read and filed or deleted. A reply returns to the sender with no context of what the original email was about, except for possibly the subject. Thus, with email, it is common for people to include some or all of the original email along with the reply.

Believe it or not, when replying to a newsgroup including the original message in it's entirety is considered bad form. You see, I'll repeat the basic information - newsgroups are not email. So what is a newsgroup that makes it special?

A newsgroup is something called a threaded group conversation. Let's say you post a message asking for suggestions for a name for your puppy. Now someone else replies with a suggestion, and a third person asks for clarification. You post your clarification, and he posts a name in return.

You: Anyone got a good name for my puppy?
Sam: How about Hades?
Tom: What sex is the dog?
You: She's a German Shepard.
Tom: Oh, I've got a great name! Kibbles!

You see, it's just lake having a conversation in the middle of a gymnasium. You've got a whole bunch of people listening and anyone can chime in at any minute. And here's the critical information: all of the original messages are included in entirety (with some exceptions) and are available to all readers.

What winds up happening if everyone includes the original text is the messages get longer and longer with unnecessary information. This clogs up servers with information which is already available to everyone. It is very annoying to read a one line reply with a hundred lines of previously posted messages - and even more annoying to read these over and over again.

Another thing you have to understand is email technical works different than newsgroups. When you send an email it makes it's way across the internet to someone else. It sits on a server, waiting for them to read the message, then is downloaded to their computer system. Individual emails do not require a huge amount of resources to deliver.

A newsgroup, on the other hand, sits in it's entirety on every single newsgroup server (those that include the newsgroup) in the world. Thus, if there are 100,000 newsgroup servers on the planet which serve that newsgroup, then your message is copied 100,000 times! Thus, a single newsgroup message uses a tremendous amount of internet resources. It's best to keep the size of the newsgroup message as small as possible to reduce the internet resources used.

So how much of the original message should you put in your reply to a newsgroup? Just enough to establish what you are talking about. Edit down the original posting to a single line or two or perhaps three. That's all you need.

Sometimes people wonder where to include the response. Some say you should include the reply after the snippet from the original message, some say after. Personally, I like to intersperse my comments with the original posting(s). I think this preserves context much better. You should also include the name of the person who wrote the message so people know whom you are replying to. Here's an example:

> Meg wrote:
> Hi, I'm looking for a name for my new puppy. Any suggestions?

How about Hades!

> Meg wrote:
> I picked up the dog from the pound ...

I got my first dog from the pound as well. Worked out pretty well.