Mailing list woes

[Markus Schönhaber]

Charlie Gray:

> The Ubuntu guidelines recommend you snip messages and do not quote a
> whole conversation, but then surely if somebody comes along half way
> through, they will not know what is going on without reading each email.

If the quoted context (provided it was chosen thoughtfully) really isn't
enough for a reader he can, without problems, read other posts of the
thread (any sensible mail client will group them by Message-ID,
In-Reply-To, References headers). I consider this *much* more convenient
than to have to skim through an ever growing amount of text - that I
have already seen a dozen times or so - trying to figure out where the
actual news is and - more importantly - what part of the previous mail
it refers to. Having to do that for every single mail in a lengthy
thread is more than annoying.
Trimming, IMO, is the *most* important thing to do to keep a
conversation readable.
I consider full-quotes (with *very* few exceptions) as utter nonsense -
and whether one puts his reply above or below the full quote simply
results in a slightly different type of nonsense.

> So do you only quote the last text you are replying to and not the
> previous people or irrelevant paragraphs?

I only quote that part(s) of the previous post that are needed to put my
reply/replies into context (that may, in some cases, include even parts
of "pre-previous" posts - if they're needed to put one's own reply into
an understandable context).
Of course, this results in more effort for the poster than just typing
something at the point where the mail client chose to place the cursor
and hitting "Send". But the benefit for the reader is IMO enormous. And
whoever is too lazy to undergo this effort should think about whether it
really is a good idea to make things easier for himself by thus making
it harder for the potential reader - from whom he might expect help.

Regards
  mks