Joe Brenner wrote:
> Reply *below* the quotation (and trim the excess, there's no
> need to quote everything). That way after several exchanges
> it will read like a dialog.
>
> You'd think everyone here grew up using Microsoft mailers.
For me the issue is not what mailer, but a combination of ignorance and, I
guess, lazyness. I use netscape communicator on win98 as my primary mail
reader both at work and at home on my laptop. useing the preferences I
can set the reply to format to above or below quoted text and have changed
it to below for the time being. I actually never knew this was considered
the prefered location. I do trim quoted text if it gets out of hand.
My issue is that if I am following a thread that may have several
responses, why should I have to scroll down through the same output every
time? Is this a netiquite custom that was set when the number of people
involved was much lower hence a much smaller volume of mails? I can still
usually follow a thread that the order gets chopped up and if I get lost
it is usually because the clipping of replies has cut so much context out
that I end up going back to the original messages to find the context. I
keep a considerable amount of archives in my mail account at the office
and find that the moongroup archives are a valuable resource as well.
I certainly understand the need for snipping long messages, because unlike
a growing majority in the world I don't think there is unlimited
bandwidth. I shudder to think how muth bandwidth and disk space is wasted
with repeated instructions on how to unsubscribe to a list. Much more
than the occasional unsubscribe messages that do make it through.
I will place the replies at the bottom if that is the consensus of the
community is but I disagree with it. I have been noticably irritated by
having to repeatedly scroll down but as I value my membership in this
community I will <gasp> conform to the norm. I would like to know if
others think this makes since in todays world of several hundred messages
a day. I value every keystroke I can save. Maybe someone can start a
site and let people vote on just what the consensus is in this changing
world.
BTW in an unrelated point, harddrive space is relatively cheap today and
getting cheaper. Bandwith is increasing also but I do believe that we
need to be aware of our usage. My time is going the other way as an owner
of a startup with two people trying to do everything.
One last comment if redhat is going to put something at the end of every
mail then why not a blurb about where to get to an easily searchable
archive like www.moongroup.com/redhat.phtml?
Bret
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