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From: sewilco@mecc.UUCP (Scot E. Wilcoxon)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: The 50% rule is in--now what?
Message-ID: <641@mecc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Nov-86 06:40:30 EST
Article-I.D.: mecc.641
Posted: Sun Nov  9 06:40:30 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Nov-86 20:57:47 EST
References: <212@cartan.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: sewilco@mecc.UUCP (Scot E. Wilcoxon)
Organization: MN Ed. Comp. Corp., St. Paul, MN
Lines: 24
Summary: Rn needs friendlier rejection.  Experimentation next.

In article <212@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU writes:
>OK everybody, we've all seen the growing rash of people padding their
>postings with 50% rule killers.  I hate line-eaters, I hate **REPLACE
...
>I propose that it be lowered to 40% new material, applied to longer
>postings only, and that the bounce message be more to the point, with
>strong encouragement to edit/paraphrase the original better.
...

Most important is a friendlier rejection interface, so people can be told
what is wrong and given a chance to easily remedy it.  (I'm an Rn user)
Then some experimentation is needed to find an acceptable (unobtrusive but
effective?) rule.

Unfortunately, if the rule is made complicated, it will seem random.

Personally, avoiding the 50% rule has forced me to be extremely aware of
my quote/comment ratio.  When in doubt and unable to reduce quotes any
further, I do prefer to defeat quoting rather than face "dead.article".
-- 
Scot E. Wilcoxon   Minn Ed Comp Corp  {quest,dayton,meccts}!mecc!sewilco
(612)481-3507      sewilco@mecc.MECC.COM       ihnp4!meccts!mecc!sewilco
	Laws are society's common sense, recorded for the stupid.
	The alert question everything and most laws are obvious to them.