Eunice wrote, "I THINK the measure (of excessive quotes) is strictly one of length, not censorship."
 
It is obvious to me that regardless how I explain the issue, people are simply going to quote the entiriety of the article to which they are responding.  I do not know how to better explain the issue of excessive quotes better that I have many, many times in the past.  My attempts are all in the archives.  EVERYTHING that is distributed on BEE-L is in the archives.  Keeping everything in the archives consumes storage resources.  I have been directed by the University of Albany to conserve disk space.  "No excessive quotes" is not an arbitrary rule I made up, it is a U of A directive.  I estimate I am able to edit excessively quoting posts on the average of 50% in size.  That's an amazing conservation of disk resources!  Unfortunately I do not have the time to edit all such posts in that manner, and on the occasions when I DO edit posts, LISTSERV distributes the posts as if I were the author rather than attributing the post to whomever originally submitted it.  As I stated last week, I will no longer edit posts that contain excessive quotes.
 
I'm not sure is Enice is speculating or asking, "Deleting all the previous post seems to be all that is required to get your message
posted to the list???"  Please note, I have now quoted the entirety of Eunice's post!  Whether I quote the entire post and respond, or quote the first half and respond to the first half, and the quote the second half and respond to the second half, by the end of this post I have quoted the entirety of Enice's post, which now takes up twice the room in the archives as it would have had I not quoted it.
 
Twice in the past week I have returned posts to senders because the were modeled after this example.  Twice this week the posts were resubmitted simply editing out the quoted parts.  Both posts when approved were extremely vague in the approved copy.  Both COULD have been written in a manner in which the points were made in a way that a reader would understand without quoting the previous post.  Both time the authors refused to write them in that manner.  I don't have the time to play that game.  I cannot get into conversations explaining to each author how to write their submission such that it will be approved by one of the moderators.  I have done that.  See: http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm 
 
I do not know why the concept of "excessive quotes" is so hard to understand.  I can only conclude that some people simply don't appreciate it as an issue and will not be bothered with writing in a manner other than "quote a point, respond to the point".  I do not like letting posts to BEE-L die in my inbox.  I do attempt to coach new authors.  I sometimes attempt to coach authors who have been around a while.  I should not have to do so.  I do not care for the role of gate keeper.  As long as I sponsor BEE-L the U of A casts me in that role. 
 
The short of it is, follow the guidelines and the posts go through.  
 
Aaron Morris - thinking damed if I do, damed if I don't.

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