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Message: [QUOTE="cartercc, post: 4814512"] When you Actually, Sinan, I practiced law for 17 years before a career change to IT. If you've ever read any legal writing, you will know that not only every sentence needs to be supported by citation to appropriate legal authority, but multiple citations are very much favored, the more the better. In fact, you can read some legal literature that in the substantive sections contain whole pages with nothing but a single footnote with citations to authority, and some footnotes continue for pages. This is why I said that I make it a practice to include citations in all cases where they are needed to avoid ambiguity. More to the point, I assume that people responding to a thread have read the prior posts and have something to contribute to the conversation. I think we all have participated in threads where someone pops into the middle of a discussion without any idea of what was said before, and seen how that person makes a fool of himself. I don't know of any newsreader that doesn't thread messages, and certainly the web based newsreaders do. I certainly don't believe that anyone who participates in a news group in comp.lang would be ignorant of the concept of threading. People participating in a discussion owe the other participants the obligation to be aware of the prior thread of conversation. Do I think it's necessary to always attribute quotations? No, I don't. Do I think it's necessary to sometimes do so? Yes, in situations where (1) the identity of the person quoted person is relevant to the discussion, where (2) the quotations appear in posts other than the immediately preceding post, i.e., a message other than the one replied to, and where (3) there is any loss of clarity or risk of ambiguity in lack of attribution. As I said, I have never meant any offense. I've conceded that I have violated the customary etiquette of c.l.p.misc. I've offered my mea culpa. But ... I've long since turned off the quoting feature of my newsreader, and this exchange has not persuaded me to turn it back on. If I offended, I'm sorry, and you have the consolation of knowing that I won't be bothering you much in the future. CC [/QUOTE]

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