This discussion of what listowners have tried, in attempts to cut down on gratuitous, excess quoting (just hit the reply button, don't think about it, even though you hate it when others do it) reminds me of all the techniques I tried before I started the serious editing. Footers (bottom_banners) on the topic were as ignored for that as for almost everything else (basically, totally ignored). I no longer mess with them as routine items (one sees a footer all the time, ignore it, don't look to see if it has changed, or really, pay much attention to it all). Putting all the nifty "contact" info in a footer to each item has never, in my experience, reduced the number of clueless commands, questions, etc., which are missent. I post a "basic commands" item to lists once a month or so and achieve about the same level of compliance. I don't lecture in those on quoting, signing postings, etc. I used to nag folk about such things on the list. It just promoted gripes about my constant nagging, which achieving no compliance. Someone (five or eight years ago) suggested enlisting a corps of subscribers to send private notes to whomever violated whatever rule, and the violators would stop violating (he said it worked well for him). I could never get anyone to volunteer to do that on a consistent basis. If I sent private reminders (and to be effective must send them *every* time) it was "Why are you picking on me?". Ok, so, try a little editing in advance, do for them what they won't do. Did that on a limited scale, for the worst stuff. No gripes, list worked better. A little more, still no serious gripes. Hmm, they don't seem to mind the editing, but they do mind being nagged all the time. Asked the digest subscribers what they would like to see. What they wanted to see would make the distirbuted items better for the MAIL subscribers, also. So, I edit everything before distribution, following the guidelines I have developed over four or so years (no, I can't send them to you, I've never written them down; they consist of such things as "there will be only one 'sig' per posting, which will be that of the poster, and it will be the final element of the posting, no exceptions"). I could send sample digests (I save the digests, at another address, for my lists for a couple of months in case there are problems) privately to those interested in what they look like. Oh, and someone mentioned a ratio of quoted to original material. Back in the mid - later '90s had a subscriber to one of my lists whose mail system had a filter which tried to judge such things and routinely rejected most postings (I think it was anything over 50% quoting, don't recall exactly). I don't know how the system determined what was quoted material and what wasn't, but it routinely rejected items with one or two lines of quoting and many lines of original material. And *sometimes* two lines of quote from the prior with one line of reply is totally appropriate. Douglas Winship [log in to unmask]