On Wednesday 16 September 2020 12:04:04 Dan Youngquist wrote:
> On 09/16/2020 09:45 AM, William Morder via tde-users wrote:
> > We could stick to "strictly business"; which I am sure would please the
> > no-nonsense people here, but alienate others. For what it's worth, I also
> > don't like reading the threads when they get too far disconnected from
> > the original topic. But how far is too far? No jokes at all? No witty
> > retorts?
>
> That's a completely different topic; we're talking about seemingly endless
> levels of untrimmed quotes that one has to scroll through to get to a very
> short reply at the bottom.  Makes it very difficult to read and follow a
> discussion.
>
> (Personally, I like to see a little personal banter and joking; it helps
> one get to know the folks we're communicating with.  It does go a bit too
> far sometimes, but for me it only becomes irritating when these two
> problems are combined -- page after page after page of untrimmed,
> now-irrelevant quotes many levels deep, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling,
> just to find a line or two of something completely irrelevant at the
> bottom.)

I can live with that. My problem is always, where to start revising or cutting 
what others have said. 

And when the original topic (say, about installing Icecat) suddenly veers into 
philosophy and politics and Big Brother, etc., this really ought to be turned 
into a completely new, separate thread. It's interesting, sometimes, but the 
original topic got lost in discussions of matters that were several steps 
removed from where it started. 

So what would be our rule? except to create a new thread, early on, once we 
realize where this train wreck is headed. 

Bill