Upsidedown Posting

by Richard Christopher, Dorking, Surrey, UK

Royal National Institute for the Blind (Redhill)

I wonder if I can ask you to spare a thought for your many blind readers who, although they often have guide dogs, are not averse to owning the odd cat or two. Also cats help keep the dogs in order although they tend to take the most disgraceful liberties with the good-natured attitudes of labradors. At this very moment there's a long-suffering labrador getting the occasional biff on the nose from my cat for not being a cat.

JAWS (Job Access With Speech) is a popular newreader with the blind and is a real newsreader inasmuch as it reads out posts aloud. It is configured along AUP Usenet conventions and has no problems with most newsgroups except this one.

Many of you throw JAWS into a state of confusion by posting upside-down. That is, you add your comments at the top of a follow-up and leave the attributed follow-up trailing below. And very often many don't bother to trim the reposted article to salient points. A blind reader has to keep hitting skip when it finally dawns that he or she is being presented with the entire post again without comments at the end.

Please remember that a Usenet post has one writer but many readers therefore it is sensible to cater for the majority when posting. Also, trimming to salient points and adding your comments below is a Usenet convention, contained in the RFC and is invariable included in your server's AUP which you have agreed to adhere to.

Clagging servers with millions of bytes of unnecessary untrimmed reposts doesn't do anyone any favours and invariable leads to ISPs expiring offending newsgroups more quickly than others, as is happening with this newsgroup.

Some of you may argue that Outlook Express is the culprit because it places the cursor at the top of a post when replying. Nearly all newsreaders do this, expecting you to trim the repost before entering your reply underneath. What Outlook Express doesn't do is automatically strip signature files from reposts but that's easy to do yourself. All in all, Outlook Express is a dreadful newsreader - clumsy and bloated. Forte Free Agent is quite good.

So please could we have a little consideration for others.

Many thanks for your attention.

Editor's note:

• If you want to comment on this article, why not write direct to Richard Christopher
• He will be pleased to hear from you!
• This article first appeared on a cat newsgroup

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