Attribution conventions

[davewitley]

Chipping in with a few comments and reminiscences of my own here...

Shaun and others have been debating what the best standard for 
attribution is for HPFGU (and Shaun pointed out that the HBfile 
isn't completely definitive).

I think one factor that makes this difficult to determine in the 
case of HPFGU is that, apparently, we have a relatively high 
proportion of members for whom this is their first real experience 
of internet discussion groups, whether mailing list, message board 
or other format.

It does seem that for many people the nested attribution style does 
represent a significant learning investment - IIRC, in the admin 
team about 18 months ago we had a debate along the lines 
of "Whaddaya mean you find all those carets hard to follow?  ARPAnet 
users have been using it since 1984" (or whenever it was); "Maybe, 
but just sticking quotes round the text and putting it in order with 
the name on top makes intuitive sense to me" and so on.

In the end it was recognised this is a cultural matter as much as 
anything, and what seems easy to use for one person is hard to 
follow (or even alien) for another.

Hence there are no easy answers, because following something that is 
an internet-wide standard is not necessarily motivating for many 
members.

Whether HPFGU is at the vanguard of changing standards, or a 
historical curiosity, remains to be seen.

David