[B-Greek] "Unreadable" messages on b-greek?

Nichael Cramer nichael at sover.net
Wed Jul 1 10:39:01 EDT 2009


Just to add a couple more bits of information:

1] This definitely isn't restricted to messages from Carl (I only 
used his message because Carl
is on my tend-to-read list for this list, and I finally felt 
motivated to ask about this).
Also, note below:  Carl's response came through without any problem.

2] This seem to happen to about half the messages I receive on b-greek.
(Another non-Carl example is the original message from Mark Lightman
"Top Ten Signs ....")

However once a message gets "polluted", it seems that all subsequent responses
to that message seem to be as well.

3] Also, as I noted below, I only observe this behavior on messages 
to this list;
i.e. on none of the several other lists that I subscribe to.  (So I'm 
suspicious that
this could be a feature of my mail-reader.)

4] So, I guess one real question:  Has anyone else observed this behavior?

Nichael

Carl Conrad wrote:
>On Jul 1, 2009, at 9:14 AM, Nichael Cramer wrote:
>>Greetings
>>
>>It's likely that this has been discussed before, but:
>>
>>For some time now I've been in a "skim over mode" for messages on
>>this list,
>>but I've notice that many messages are packed down like the following:
>>
>>On Jun 30, 2009, at 1:49 PM, Elizabeth Kline wrote: > Carl, > > On
>>Jun 30, 2009, at 9:10 AM, Carl Conrad wrote: >> >> EIPEN DE hO
>>KURIOS, EI ECETE PISTIN hWS KOKKON SINAPEWS, ELEGETE AN  >> THi
>>SUKAMINWi TAUTHi, EKRIZWQHTI KAI FUTEUQHTE EN THi QALASSHi KAI  >>
>>hUPHKOUSEN AN hUMIN. >>> Is this a simple conditional statement???
>>the use of the  >>> indicative in the protasis seems to indicate it
>>is, but I  >>> understand simple conditionals are rather rare. Also,
>>the  >>> theological interpretations I have encountered seem to treat
>>this  >>> verse as a general conditional statement. Any input would
>>be  >>> greatly
>>
>>That is, it looks like all carriage-returns and other extra
>>white-space have been
>>deleted, rendering the message all but unreadable.
>>
>>What's the problem here?   So far as I can tell, of the several lists
>>that I subscribe
>>to this occurs only on b-greek, so I'm pretty sure the problem isn't
>>on my end.
>>
>>An effort to weed out all but the most devoted readers?  ;-)
>
>Those who are old enough may remember the lead-in to the 1940's radio
>show: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" -- followed by
>a burst of malicious laughter -- folowed by the punch line: "The
>Shadow knows!"
>
>I may be a shady figure, but I am not the Shadow. I know a little bit
>of the truth and I doubt that there's any evil involved in this
>formatting mess. I know that I am to blame for the mess above, but I
>also know that the message as I formatted it came back to me as I had
>formated it and also showed up in the BG archives as I formatted it:
>
>http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2009-July/049648.html
>
>The message to which I was responding had the conventional left-hand
>markers of levels of cited text of messages in the thread. I
>reformatted all of these so that all lines of each paragraph cited
>constituted a single paragraph in my mail program's (Mac Mail)
>composer. What I sent to iBiblio was redivided into shorter lines by
>the list software at iBiblio and then distributed to the list. But
>evidently those original citation indicators left tracks that were
>retained and displayed in some mail readers, including Nichael's. Some
>programming gurus may be able to offer explanations of what happened,
>but I can offer none, other than that different Mail programs handle
>the incoming formatting in different ways. I'm sorry that my message
>came out that way.
>
>Carl W. Conrad
>Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)




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