[vox] Self-replying [Was "XFree86 Core Team Disbands" (?)]

[ME]

Tim Riley said:
> Jeff Newmiller wrote:
>> On Thu, 1 Jan 2004, Tim Riley wrote:
>> > ME wrote:
>> >
>> > > Look! My (lack of) nettiquette is showing:
>> > > (replying to myself)
>> >
>> > Why is adding an additional thought after pressing the <send>
>> > button bad nettiquette?
>>
>> I can think of two reasons off the top of my head:
>>
>> a) pushing the send button too quick is something to be frowned upon...
>> it
>> suggests that you do not respect your readers' time spent interpreting
>> your thoughts.  Specifically, having to thread two messages together to
>> identify a complete thought may not always be possible, since related
>> messages may not always be presented together.

I have been reluctant to compound the original mistake in omission, but
this  has gone one more than expected.

The primary reason for making the statement was suggestion "a" listed above.

Consider this:
An e-mail message goes to a list with 500 people. Of these, 60% may not be
interested in your specific topic, while 20% may be passively interested
and the last 20% very interested.

By omitting information that could have been included in the first post,
and following up the post with another to include the omitted information,
you then cause 60% of 500 people (300 people) to be forced to delete not
only the initial message, but also the message where a user replies to
themself. The 20% of users who are marginally interested won't follow the
thread unless their mail-reader threads the topic, and the last 20% (100
users) will need to take extra time to find or follow the thread to read
about the message.

All of this creates extra work for the many readers-- work that is
multiplied across the many readers.

So, sorry about the original omission and this OT followup.

-ME