On Sun, Jun 19, 2016 at 12:02:34PM -0700, Pavel Sanda wrote: > Scott Kostyshak wrote: > > Thanks for the reminder. I am guilty of this and Uwe has also reminded > > me several times. I'm trying to get better about it but I have trouble > > interpreting the "immediately relate" part of your statement. So in this > > example, what should I have deleted? Should I have deleted everything > > before "I asked while ago"? > > I guess that's matter of taste. Personally I tend to pick the sentence > or paragraph I am refering to, rarely more than that is needed.
Again, "needed" is subjective. You have been doing this for so long that it probably seems obvious to you, but I will try to get there. > And there is no need to include in my reply what I have written -2 mails > in thread - you have already reacted to that, what's the point of > repeating it. One is that someone might want to respond to multiple points from different people. For example suppose that I write an email, you respond to that email, then Bob wants to respond to points in both your email and my email. If you did not cut anything out when responding to me, then Bob can respond to my email and yours at the same time, and to me this is often more readable than Bob writing two emails (one responding to my email and one responding to yours). Note also that same mailing lists ask you to not cut out anything anyone says. For example: https://www.r-project.org/posting-guide.html "It is common practice to quote prior messages in entirety." so that there is no way of violating the rule of "The original authorship and meaning should always be clear." I have personally had some things I say taken out of context through improper use of quotes and it does not feel good. Finally, consider "If you edit the quoted text from prior messages, include sufficient context so that the content is clear even if your archived message is referenced at a much later date and in isolation from other messages." The key word in that is "isolation". Although it is not pretty with 10 levels of quotes, it satisfies the "isolation" criterium, which I do think is a worthy one. I don't really put all of the above to try to convince you that we should quote in entirety (1. I don't believe that and 2. I know I would never convince you :)). I just put it to present the other side. I get the feeling that you think people leave messages in tact only because they are lazy or crazy. I think there are rational reasons to do so, (although the most common reason probably is laziness). > There is of course matter of taste and many specific situations where > the above does not hold, but I find myself most comfortably following > thread style composed by - to pick two nice examples - JMarc and Georgs > and try to stick to similar style, believing it's what is most useful > for others as well. > Cry loud if your mind works differently ;) OK, I will try to give JMarc and Georg some competition. > > I'm guessing you know, but since you use mutt the 'T' key is very useful > > to toggle the quoted parts of messages on and off. That is also why it > > doesn't bother me when people don't delete parts of their emails. For me > > it is just one key-press. But I can understand why it's annoying to > > others. > > Yes, but I actually need the "anchoring" parts around to quickly orient > myself how the discussion branches. And this intelligence to what > is exactly being replied to can't be easily coded in the email reader. OK, just wanted to make sure you were aware. I understand your point but I still find 'T' extremely useful. > And finally - it sucks. Not these days but there are times when I have like 5 > mins a day to go through 30-50 msgs in the list. It's quite annoying to press > for each message 5x page down to read someones sentence burried somewhere in > the message. > When you do it for the third time, you just get frustrated enough to delete > the > whole thread without following. Makes sense. Thanks for these explanations. I will make an effort to improve. Scott
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
