[pmmail-list] Quoting text (was: Spam -- your definition)

[Dave Hathaway]

Hi Marty,

The way emailers set up replies is different.  For example, my Yahoo
mail uses only:

--- Marty Rimpau <mrimpau@mindspring.com> wrote:

without any date or time stamp.  I don't have the option to say what
day or time your message was sent.

You then write:

> it gets confusing when parts of
> messages are quoted, and I might miss some important information.

I personally snip out parts of messages that I am not replying to. 
The point is to make it easier to understand the issue I am
addressing.  I include as much of the message as I think is required
to give context.  If I included your entire message, the part I want
to talk about is hard to pick out.

Many mailers I have used actually complain when I added two lines
after quoting fifty.  This recognizes that having too much "context"
is unhelpful and was actually discouraged in olde tyme netiquette.

One email list I am on has the convention that every message needs to
be quoted in its entirety inside the reply.  The daily digest grew to
be over 100K once people started including HTML.  You could scroll
through five pages of quotes of quotes of quotes (mostly broken HTML
tags) just to find the new content in EVERY message!  I dislike
quoting entire messages for that reason (although I had formed that
opinion years before the group started).  A good digest using proper
quoting is a absolute joy to read.

I hope this maybe gives you an understanding of why some (including
myself) "snip".  Likewise, I understand your view better and will try
to be more thoughtful about wholesale snipping.

Dave


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