mrl@nerus.pfc.mit.edu (06/14/91)
I'm forwarding this for a friend. His news server (I think running bnews)
recently rejected a reply to a message, and gave him the following error:
441 inews: Article rejected: news included more text than new text\
Does anyone know what the meaning of this crptic message is? Thanks.
Markwarlock@ecst.csuchico.edu (John Kennedy) (06/14/91)
In article <14JUN91.15182407@nerus.pfc.mit.edu> mrl@nerus.pfc.mit.edu writes:
--> ... His news server ... recently rejected a reply to a message, ...
--> 441 inews: Article rejected: news included more text than new text
I wish more posters enforced this, but somewhere along the line, somebody had
a good idea to help reduce message size -- mainly, make the amount of
"user-added" text be in some ratio to the amount of text the user has quoted
from a followup or whatever (usually, they need more).
It helps cut down on those silly posts you see where someone has quoted an
*enture* article, no trimming at all, added a few lines of comment, and more
often than not, his signiture has more lines than his message text.
I'd personally like to see more of this, but it's understandibly hard to
figure out just what actually is `quoted' text in a message, as opposed to the
users. It's far to rare for me. )-:
--
Warlock, AKA +-----------------------------------------------+
John Kennedy | internet: warlock@ecst.csuchico.edu |
CSU Chico +-----------------------------------------------+
KC6RCK IBM, You BM, We All BM for IBM!mjm@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Andy Behrens) (06/15/91)
mrl@nerus.pfc.mit.edu ask: > What does this message mean? > 441 inews: Article rejected: news included more text than new text The message *is* sort of cryptic. It means that someone was responding to another article, and the text that they quoted from that article was longer than their response to it. For example: In article <xxxxx> Joe Blow says: > blah blah blah blah > blah blah blah blah > blah blah blah blah . . > blah blah blah blah > blah blah blah blah I completely agree with what Joe says. The polite thing to do is to summarize the quotation: you rarely need to repeat the whole thing. (Besides, your audience has probably just read the article you're citing). Since people are often lazy, your news program is enforcing the polite behavior. Andy
herman@corpane.uucp (Harry Herman) (06/17/91)
In <1991Jun15.020233.14816@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> mjm@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Andy Behrens) writes: >The polite thing to do is to summarize the quotation: you rarely need >to repeat the whole thing. (Besides, your audience has probably just >read the article you're citing). Since people are often lazy, your news >program is enforcing the polite behavior. >Andy Not necessarily. It is not unusual for me to see replies to articles that I have never seen the original. I could have just joined the group (or started reading again for the first time in a long time) and the original has expired. Our news feed is intermittent, so it is possible that the original never got here. I have read that C-News is rejecting articles, so a site between the original and myself may have rejected the original. The original could have been posted to different group(s) than the reply, such that I am seeing the reply in a different newsgroup than the original was in (and possibly I don't read the group(s) the original was in). And there are probably other reasons. If you read a newsgroup every day, it is possible that the path from the original to the replyer and the replyer to you is shorter than the path from the original to you, especially if the replyer is a "neighbor" to the original. I have seen replies show up on our system before the original. Also, if systems do NOT keep their clocks set to the correct hour and minute, it is possible for news readers to sort the articles such that you see the reply first. And I am sure there are other reasons. I am not saying that the whole article needs to be included, I am just saying that you cannot ASSUME that whoever reads the reply has seen the original. Harry Herman herman@corpane
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (06/18/91)
In article <1991Jun14.155246.12371@ecst.csuchico.edu> warlock@ecst.csuchico.edu (John Kennedy) writes: >--> 441 inews: Article rejected: news included more text than new text > > I wish more posters enforced this... Actually, it's a dumb idea that has accomplished almost nothing. The main result has been increased creativity in quoting schemes for included text, which is actually counterproductive because it makes automated analysis of news harder. Improving the new:quoted ratio would be good, but this was not the way to do it. Note that John's own software is using a quoting convention that defeats the included<new enforcement. -- "We're thinking about upgrading from | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 3.5." | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz) (06/18/91)
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >>--> 441 inews: Article rejected: news included more text than new text >Actually, it's a dumb idea that has accomplished almost nothing. No its not - it might not actually be stopping people who want to from quoting lots - but it was never intended to do that. It has just about wiped out those articles that we used to see all the time which consisted of nothing but the entire previous article, quoted, and no response at all (ie: caused by users who have no idea what they're doing). I would guess that it also causes more users to think a bit about how much they are quoting, and edit more severly. kre
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (06/19/91)
In article <kre.677218797@mundamutti.cs.mu.OZ.AU> kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz) writes: >>>--> 441 inews: Article rejected: news included more text than new text > >>Actually, it's a dumb idea that has accomplished almost nothing. > >No its not - it might not actually be stopping people who want to >from quoting lots - but it was never intended to do that. It has >just about wiped out those articles that we used to see all the time >which consisted of nothing but the entire previous article, quoted, >and no response at all (ie: caused by users who have no idea what >they're doing). I dunno, I still see some of those at times. More to the point, if *that* is the objective, there are ways to do it that don't encourage people to devise new quoting conventions. (For example, C News postnews puts a dummy line in the message body and then looks to make sure you have deleted it.) This was the wrong solution. >I would guess that it also causes more users to think a bit about how >much they are quoting, and edit more severly. I doubt it very much. Any consistent hurdle is jumped automatically. People only think about it when they run into it for the first time. -- "We're thinking about upgrading from | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 3.5." | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
dce@smsc.sony.com (David Elliott) (06/20/91)
In article <1991Jun17.111656.2692@corpane.uucp>, herman@corpane.uucp (Harry Herman) writes: |> In <1991Jun15.020233.14816@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> mjm@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Andy Behrens) writes: |> >The polite thing to do is to summarize the quotation: you rarely need |> >to repeat the whole thing. (Besides, your audience has probably just |> >read the article you're citing). Since people are often lazy, your news |> >program is enforcing the polite behavior. |> Not necessarily. It is not unusual for me to see replies to articles that |> I have never seen the original. I could have just joined the group (or |> started reading again for the first time in a long time) and the original |> has expired. Our news feed is intermittent, so it is possible that the |> original never got here. While all of this is true, it's a really bad justification. Should the third book in a trilogy include the first two books? After all, it's possible for the bookstore to be out of them. Should a movie sequel begin with the entire original to accomodate the people who didn't make it to the first one? My point is that we shouldn't fix the problem of lost context by including everything. It's even worse when it's not consistent (if everyone did it, we might be able to come up with a reasonable way of dealing with it). I think that the proper fix in this case is to make sure that that original article is available somehow. It's not an easy problem to solve, but I think it is the real underlying problem. I'm not in favor of automatically rejecting articles. I think people need to think about what they post, though. If someone is responding to an article and needs to make sure that there is enough context to be understood, that's fine. The real problem is that we have people who respond to articles without thinking -- some responding by posting when mail would do, others not understanding what the original was saying. -- ...David Elliott ...dce@smsc.sony.com | ...!{uunet,mips}!sonyusa!dce ...(408)944-4073 ..."Art is never fair" - paa
rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) (06/22/91)
In article <kre.677218797@mundamutti.cs.mu.OZ.AU> kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz) writes: >henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: > >>>--> 441 inews: Article rejected: news included more text than new text > >>Actually, it's a dumb idea that has accomplished almost nothing. > >No its not - it might not actually be stopping people who want to Here is an example of what it has accomplished: Newsgroups: sci.electronics Message-ID: <1991Jun21.153844.2955@abekrd.co.uk> Sorry to go on, but my system says I must post more than I include ;-( -- =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science <rickert@cs.niu.edu> Northern Illinois Univ. DeKalb, IL 60115 +1-815-753-6940