Tesselator <jimmmboe@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> >Then read the first post fist.  Do you always start in the middle of a book?
>> When you read a newspaper, do you start with January 1 and work your way
>> up to today in June?
>So you're saying newspapers should quote the previous days' article and
>the top of each article?

Online variants actually will list pointers to priors on the subject.
But generally they write so that each article stands alone.  

>> Newsgroups have expirations as little as a couple days up to a more typical
>> few weeks.
>Actually the default is one month for all three of the most popular newsreaders
>currently in distribution.  Good try tho.  Additionally if you frequent a
>particular newsgroup it usually a good idea to increase that "30 day" default
>value to 90 days or so.

Let me explain this to you as someone who has actually run a news server.
What *you* set on your newsreader is irrelevent.  It is the admin for the
nntp server who decides.  For text groups the expiration will likely be
long.  For binary groups it could be just a day or two.  In short, you
have no reliance, and achivers like Google may respect the X flag to 
not save the article.  

It is laziness alone that leads you to expect the reader to read the
context that you wouldn't provide.  Your choice, but if you're going to
take the time to write such pearls of wisdom, you might as well make it
readable.  I don't try very hard to read poorly written articles, I
just skip on.  

>> And in a long running thread, the first post may or may not
>> be available, or it may be a few hundred posts ago.
>
>So we should include all that and post at the bottom of a few hundred
>quoted messages?  Right...

It should take very little included text to show context.  


-- 
Jason O'Rourke www.jor.com