Re: Email ettiquette rant

[Jim Cheetham]

Now that a fair few of you have stuck your necks out, I thought I'd 
share my thoughts again :-)

Top-posting. I like it - but I also try to signal the end of my message 
by signing off before the quoted section begins. Handy when the thread 
is new or active, where people have probably just read the thread parent.

Quote-reply. Trim down the message to reply just to snippets of the 
parent. Sometimes visually difficult, please try to leave *different* 
whitespace before and after your comments so we can work out if your 
comment applies to the line above or the line below. Probably not 
appropriate if the thread is an old or slow one, because there'll be 
extra context in the original that you're removed.

Bottom post. Demanded by the qmail list, which is enough reason to 
utterly reject it. The typical mode of the "me too" poster. Far too much 
scrolling has to be done in nearly all MUAs before you get to the new 
content. However, it can be handy if you suddenly receive a copy of a 
message part-way through a conversation, it helps you track the order of 
responses better than the previous two methods. For that reason. I'd 
support bottom posting in a person-to-person(s) email exchange, but not 
on a list.

Random comment insertion. Too difficult. I have better things to do. 
Your loss, not mine.

Total eradication. What I've done here. Nothing that came before was 
worth repeating, but the thread itself is worth contributing to. 
Sometimes a very useful thing.

-jim, official prodder-of-the-list. Should have started this on on a 
Friday morning, I think ... or a Monday ...