"Reinserted" attributions and hypothetical quote levels marked with "}"
On 2006-05-20, Keith Thompson <kst-> wrote:
> (Gordon Burditt) writes:
}} Someone??? wrote:
}}} Someone, probably Gordon Burditt again, wrote:
>>>> Attribution = misattribution. Even though you and I think that
>>>> attributions indicate who wrote what, and we might even agree on
>>>> who wrote what, the authors of other articles in the thread don't
>>>> agree, and if I don't snip attributions, I get complaints from
>>>> several authors each claiming I mis-attributed the *SAME* text to
>>>> them. That can draw lawsuits. As far as I know, non-attribution
>>>> cannot.
>>>
>>>I don't understand your objection. I've been posting to Usenet
>>>for many years now and I've never encountered anyone who made
>>>such bizarre allegations.
>>
>> If I post an article with more than one attribution (other than
>> mine), I get complaints from authors claiming that I am attributing
>> some text they don't like (typically a newbie question or someone
>> generalizing his compiler to the entire world) to them. Since I
>> get complaints from several different people complaining that I
>> have attributed the *SAME* text to them, it's obvious that some of
>> the complaintants don't know how to read attributions, and I can't
>> fix that.
>> Every post I have made with more than one attribution in it in maybe
>> 10-15 years has had such complaints (mostly by email). (Before
>> that I used Notesfiles for about a decade. That had all kinds of
>> problems with threading and replies, including the idea that replies
>> didn't have their own subject line - but that was the only type of
>> feed available at the time). I am told that trn and some other
>> newsreaders I have used "just do attributions right". All I have
>> to do is do a followup and leave the attributions alone. But that
>> doesn't stop the complaints.
Have you been leaving everything alone? Or have you been leaving
attributions alone while still happily snipping text (see below for the
reason this isn't necessarily good practice)
>> Some of the complaints threaten lawsuits (most of which I don't
>> take seriously). It is obvious just from reading comp.lang.c or
>> some other newsgroups that mis-attributing some of the stupid stuff
>> said to a professional programmer who happens to be looking for a
>> job from an employer who reads USENET could be the basis for a
>> lawsuit with *real* damages. So it's better to delete the attributions.
>> Non-attribution has no such potential for real damages.
>
> I find this whole thing absolutely astonishing. I've posted hundreds
> or thousands of messages, most of them followups, many of them in long
> threads with deeply nested quotes. I don't remember *ever* getting an
> e-mail complaint about a misattribution. I've probably gotten a few
> posted complaints; if they're correct I've apologized and moved on,
> and if they're not, I've pointed out the complainer's error and moved
> on. In either case, it's never been a huge deal.
Even more bizarrely, any time i've seen an attribution complaint along
the lines he's described made to ANYONE, it's been because of
attribution lines being improperly snipped.
Alice writes:
} Carol wrote:
}} Bob wrote:
}}}} Alice's question
} I didn't say that.
}}} Bob's answer
}} Carol's response to the answer
In this case, it's possible that the problem was that while the posts in
question had more than one attribution, they did not have enough to
cover the quoted text, and he got the reason for the complaints exactly
backwards.
Or, more likely maybe he snipped text without snipping attributions,
say...
Dave wrote:
} Carol wrote:
}} Bob wrote:
}}} Alice wrote:
}} Carol's reply to Bob
} Dave's reply
[Here, Alice and Bob can both claim that they were misattributed. Alice
has a better case, since Bob did "write" an attribution line that was
retained.]
His solution - trimming attributes to a minimum all the time, is almost
worse than the problem. What you (Gordon B) SHOULD be doing is trimming
any attribution that applies to text you have trimmed, and retaining
attribution that applies to text that you leave in.
As a rule of thumb, each attribution line should be one quote level
beyond the one above it, and the first text line should be one quote
level further than the last attribution line. Follow this rule and you
can't go wrong.
More precisely, each attribution line present should correspond to some
text lines at the next further quoting level, and each level of quoting
present in the text should have an attribution line at the next less
quoting level.
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