Ken Friedman wrote:

> There seem to be different views about the length of a post to the DRS
list.
> Do most readers of DRS list feel that we should restrict ourselves to
short
> notes and responses or statements of opinion, saving lengthier reports
and
> responses for journal and monograph publication?
> Or is this a forum in which there is also room for longer replies and
> comments?

Once-upon-a-time modems were slow enough that long posts were
problematic. It was seen as an irritating cost to download a long piece
that you then decided was of no interest.

Today, that is not true for most people. At 25-50 Kbaud, where most
modems are running now, a 12 page piece of text (25 Kbytes) will take
no more than five to ten seconds to retrieve.  This is longer than 99%
of the email we get on a listserv.

For longer items, many listservs ask that you simply include a link
to them, so people can retrieve them at will, and the digest version
of the list is not too inflated.

So what is the cost of a long post?

Not download time.

Disk storage is now so cheap that email does not constitute a storage
cost of significance.

And not decision time.  I can view the top few lines of a long post and
decide to delete it, or read it, or file it, in as little time as a
short
one.

If people want to put the effort into essays of a weighty nature, I'm
all for it.

Thanks for asking.

--
Rhodes Hileman . Personal replies to mailto:[log in to unmask] .
All contact info can be found at - http://www.smsys.com/smaladdr.html




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