[FRIAM] Thread/Post hygiene

[Steve Smith]

Nick -
> Glen's proscriptions are not gratuitous.  He is kindly responding to a specific request for recommendations. 
In case you thought I was arguing or rejecting anything, I did
understand you made a request and Glen gave you his pre/pro scriptions
regarding that request.
> But I see, alas, that I am a hypocrite.  (Glen has known this for some time, but I have only just discovered it.)  

> I have no intention of giving up larding. 
As I already said, I don't mind a little lard.   I think the mode in
which you lard would be less obtrusive if you used the default/implicit
support that comes with default mail styling that most mail tools
offer.  I'm not sure what happened that made you force your own
lard-styling with HTML.   I seem to remember that your mail tool of
choice is whatever Windoze offers by default (Outlook?) which I know
nothing about, but I'd be surprised if using it with all the default
settings, that a simple "Reply" or "Reply List" wouldn't give you a copy
of the original text with the obligatory ">" at the beginning of each
included line (possibly rendered as a vertical bar and blue font) for
you to then trim down (or not) and pre/post/lard-pend your own
responses.   Best I can tell (most) everyone else here uses that
technique.    Your need for HTML to support more obvious larding may
reflect some small misunderstanding of default settings, etc.  in how
you view and compose a thread?  Unfortunately the best way for any of us
to help you with that is probably elbow-to-elbow (and then probably
someone who likes/uses Outlook regularly?).
>  And I certainly have no intention of giving up hypertext.  And I more often wish a thread hadn't been trimmed than wish it had.  So, I guess what I have to give up on, is the notion that exchanges such as ours, which are full of potentially publishable material, must be recreated in another form, or lost forever to the ages.  This is a bitter pill, for me.  So much of what is written here seems VERY good indeed. 

I don't see you using hypertext for much more than your lard-styling?  I
forgot the other "good reason" for HTML that I accept...  and that would
be hyperlinks, I already mentioned inlined images.

The archives will be there for *some* time and some of us will have our
own copies (and backups of those copies) requiring more than anything
the will and diligence for someone to sift them down, untangle them and
reweave them into something more suitable for consumption by others.  
Unfortunately I don't know who would be motivated to do that.    I would
hope/think/trust that were one or another of us urps up a real gem that
others engage them offline to go forward with a more tight-loop
collaboration.   I have easily a half-dozen relationships with
list-members off-list, some which have yielded at least white papers or
mini coding projects.   

I still remember fondly the 'noodling' you tried to instigate in SFx
days using the Wiki software that we maintained for a very related
purpose.   Unfortunately I don't remember many others (maybe Benny
Lichtner, Guerin, ???) pitching in with us.   I share your fascination
with collaborative processes and am envious of some of Glen's (and
others'?) references to their experiences with Dungeons and Dragons and
the implied worldbuilding that lead to.   I was hopeful for the Massive
Multiplayer Online gaming world yielding something really good (and
those who play those games which is typified for me by World of
Warcraft, though i"m sure that's OldSkool by now).   I have done some
time with collaborative fiction writing which was interesting but never
lead to anything very satisfying... beyond the process. 

I've also found traditional styles of collaborative paper writing
lacking.  I can't remember a paper I wrote with others where at least
one member felt like they "did all the work" and in *some* cases, they
were spot on.   Most of my collaborators have been very gracious and it
works well because of that.  Often the work gets broken up into sections
with each author/specialist writing "their section" and then taking
turns editing the union down to normalize terminology and such.  

Maybe you can speak more TO what you think an interesting/good
collaboration would look like here? 

I appreciate what Glen says in another post on this thread: "But part of
what you (seem to) respond to is the crazy nonsense splatter. And those
tools are NOT appropriate for that. An email forum IS appropriate for
that."  I'm one of the worst purveyors of "crazy nonsense splatter", yet
I also really appreciate it when a small few here manage to find some
coherence and begin to "lase"... to bounce back and forth, amplifying a
base signal while removing incoherent noise.     

- Steve

>
> Oh well. 
>
> Nick  
>
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>  
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
> Sent: Thursday, June 4, 2020 12:32 PM
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: [FRIAM] Thread/Post hygiene
>
> To All -
>
> Even though I don't follow Glen's 5 commandments religiously (or even well), I appreciate the attempt to normalize the stylization of the conversations here.
>
> I'm facile enough with my own mail-tool and auxiliary tools to
> *function* when people get overly idiosyncratic with their mail-client use and formatting. I live with the HTML that sometimes gets embedded by some clients/modes of use.   I *prefer* that people inline images (rather than attach, requiring opening in another tool, etc.) and ???
> which I think is usually effected through HTML.  I believed until "just now" that what I see as "blue text with a vertical line on the left" was embedded HTML, i now see it is just the way Thunderbird renders the (now
> ancient) Unix Mail formatting of a ">" preceding the line when included (and ">>" etc.)
>
> I prefer *bold* and _underline_ and -italics- markup conventions as well as (HTML again?) fixed/variable width as the only font conventions, though I"m guilty of using the HTML formatting (bullets, indentions etc) and even the Bold/Italics/Underline bits sometimes. 
>
> I'm a larder, but I've tried to cut down on that which also cuts down on the exponential growth of conversations if I don't respond to every point one of you makes with "two thoughts", etc.   I will redouble my efforts to keep the FriAM thread R0 < 1.0.
>
> Everything Glen says about trimming the post to what  you are responding to and sporadically summarizing are things I really appreciate when others do it (well), though sometimes if done poorly it feels like misappropriating a thread.  
>
> We have been so thread-bendy (thread-shreddy) of late that it feels like
> *everyone* has given up on this, but I suspect we might be able to rein ourselves in (I caught myself just now almost continuing this under Santa Fe Plaza Riot!
>
> - Steve
>
>
> On 6/3/20 5:29 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
>> 0th lesson: Reply, don't Forward.
>> 1st lesson: Don't lard, whole thoughts only, top or bottom posted.
>> 2nd lesson: Trim the parts of the post you're responding to down to the part you're responding to.
>> 3rd lesson: Sporadically summarize the gist of the thread including edited/selected (for and against) [ir]relevant sub-threads.
>> 4th lesson: Don't use a web client. Download all of the posts, and download the whole of every post, including the headers.
>>
>> And, no. *I* will never use HTML compostion unless it's by accident because I'm on a stupid ... I mean "smart" ... device wherein I can't figure out how to make it plain text. What does HTML get you anyway? ... except for extra formatting that takes even more tech to handle well? Now, if you really do NOT want to use email, then don't use email. Move to a different forum technology. There's a-plenty out there.
>>
>> On 6/3/20 12:21 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>>> */[NST===> I hear you callin’ glen, but I genuinely don’t know how to 
>>> respond.  If you have ways that we might organize our conversations 
>>> so they made more sense, and you are willing to give 
>>> expert-to-citizen instructions, I promise to try them.  In the 
>>> meantime, you couldn’t, by any chance, speaking of Ludditry, be 
>>> seduced into using HTML?<===nst] /*
>
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