Re: Is [missing context] a reasonable rejection criterion?
On Jun 27, 6:53 pm, Daveed <vandevoo...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello newsgroup,
For the past few years, the moderators have regularly rejected
articles with the undocumented rejection criterion [missing context].
This criterion is sometimes used when a new posting does not seem to
"make sense on its own"; i.e., the preceding postings in the thread
have to be retrieved and read to understand the new article.
One reason that [missing context] never made it to the moderation
guide as an "official rejection" criterion is that the moderators
don't agree about it. Instead, we ended up "agreeing to disagree" and
let each moderator implement their own policy in this regard. This
state of affairs is less than ideal: We'd like to resolve it one way
or the other.
So, if you care, please followup to this post with your own opinion
and arguments on the matter. If we can discern a clear bias in the
ensuing thread, it will help us decide which way to go.
I think that it should be OK to reject a post in a follow-up that
contains no context at all (and yet needs such a context in order to
be understood). Otherwise, a post that quotes minimally (or even
insufficiently) should probably not be rejected for insufficient
context.
The primary reason for establishing a hard limit on under-quoting
would be to avoid creating a "Goldilocks"-like situation: in which one
person's first post may be rejected for including too little context,
while an revised version may be rejected for including too much
context ("overquoting"), and only by the third attempt would the post
have quoted context in an amount that is "just right." Also, it seems
more likely to me, that a post without any context is sometimes one
that is sent by mistake (as in fact I did once) - so the poster may
even be relieved by a rejection (as I was).
After all, if a person composing a post for this newsgroup, is unsure
on which side to err when it comes to how much quoted context is the
"right" amount, then having two grounds for rejecting messages - one
for quoting too little and another for quoting too much - is not
likely to provide much guidance. And since there is consensus about
over-quoting, but not about under-quoting, it seems reasonable to
encourage erring on the side of the latter.
Greg
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