Somebody who is going to take the time to add context will hopefully also take the time to change the syntax to match that (ie, add their own “via” at the end). Somebody who blindly forwards from a client that uses a “via” tag creates *more* signal-to-noise since the re-tweet is not not obvious.

In terms of the philosophical debate about re-tweeting, I think the reality is that if somebody is cluttering up your feed with RT’s, then simply stop following them. The whole magic of Twitter is that it’s a completely open follower model… There are inane jerks with non-original ideas in the real world, so there are going to be the same people on Twitter. If it annoys you, then why are these people on your list of followers?

I personally use RT sparingly, but it’s a great way to pass on community-type announcements for those of us with smaller circles of followers and even occasionally share a humorous quote here and there. With only 140 characters to play with, most tweets speak for themselves and don’t need any more context, and even then it’s hard to add it.

Long-time reader and fan here. I’ve been thinking a lot about Twitter spam lately. I have people that I have wholeheartedly respected and talked to turn on Twitter and just become either Ghost writers or Spam RT bots.

That gets old hella quick. This has led me to thinking about different reasons why I follow people in the first place and, in turn, why they would follow me.

A few days ago I came across FAVRD and I wrote a blog post about what is is and what it has meant to me on Twitter: http://www.sagerock.com/blog/favrd/

Tho it’s obviously not perfect, I’m at least now feeling that I’m not getting scammed by people just by trying to read the best 140 in my downtime that I can.

And although I see a few RTs coming through, most are interesting because they are of interest to the person I’m following and are therefore likely to be of interest to me. If that makes sense.

Fortunately I have not received any Twitter SPAM. Really not looking forward to the prospect of that!

Retweeting is akin to copy and pasting! And if you copy and paste other peoples’ stuff you probably have nothing worthwhile to say anyway!

Via at least is English and usually comes *after* content rather than warning me of it’s lack.

Retweeting is a way of spreading information, benefitting the tweeps who missed the original tweet and leading others to check out new tweeps to follow.

I’m sorry to be extra snarky, but the defense of the button and “via” is just silly. It’s like saying car horns make took much noise, so our car horns make a meep sound instead of a beep sound.

On the other hand, the most off-putting thing I see is constant begging for diggs and floats. Like Alex, if I like what you have to say, I might digg or float it; might even retweat it. But if you blatantly ASK ME, it’s nearly a given that I won’t.

Nice to see another perspective on things. (And happily using your Tweet Tools on all web sites!)

I can’t help but find it amusing that the same thing people complained about early in blogging days (“too much link posting! Not enough original content!”) is now being heard in the arena of mini-blogging. Same choices apply, follow or not, and for better or worse, I doubt this will be the last stylistic issue the mini blogging world argues about.

I can get by the repetitiveness – I miss a bunch of signal anyways because of pure volume of good stuff.

However, yes, I do get annoyed by fan-type retweeting. (the “OMG! Everyone look what @[most-stalked-web-personality] said today! He’s so divine…”