Subject: Re: error posting message?

From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 11:03:00 -0400

On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, Robert Frayer wrote:

> When I try to send a reply to a message and include the original message 
> in the reply I am given "error posting message:441 article not posted 
> more included text than new". I'm not sure exactly what this means and 
> what to do about it.

    It means that the mail or news processing software at your site 
is enforcing a restriction which not all sites enforce.  (Mine, for
example, does not.)  That's why not everybody sees this error message.

    What you did, in all probability, is respond to an email or
newsgroup message.  When you replied, Pine "quoted" each line of the
original message with a less-than (>) sign to designate the original
material.  (There are ways of changing this quoting symbol,
incidentally.)  Then you added your reply.  However, the amount of your
reply was less than the amount of the original text.  Some mail agents
(or newsgroup posting agents, especially) do not permit this and refuse
your new message with the error indication you received above.  You
must redo things so that the amount of new material you add is greater
than the amount of quoted original material you are responding to. 
(I am unsure whether the criterion is line count or total character
count.)

    Even though it seems a little unfair, because some people are
subject to this restriction and some are not (depends on site policy),
it was instituted for a purpose.  How many times have we seen followup
postings on newsgroups which quote a 100-line original post in its
entirety only to add a 3-line reply at the very bottom?  It can be very
aggravating.  This restriction which you have run into forbids that
kind of nonsense.  It is not a restriction of Pine but of the software
which processes the mail or news once Pine has released it.

Paul                             <[email-masked]>
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key 
Home Page:  URL: http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart

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From: Robert Frayer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 08:54:52 -0500

Sincerely,
                           Bob.