repeating portions of earlier messages

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2005 at 03:10:38PM -0500, Wilson Gray wrote:
> Ron's suggestion seems to be a  reasonable compromise to me. For
> reasons known only to the gremlins of e-mail, I don't always receive
> the initial post and it's nice to be able to scroll down to see what
> the original question was.

People interested in this subject should Google "top-posting"
for a wide variety of discussions on the topic. Most people
dislike top-posting and prefer _edited_ posts with the new
comments interspersed.

Most of the ADS-L comments in favor of top-posting are arguing
that it helps people remember the chain of discussion. In
fact, this is an argument _against_ what is often practiced
here. I, for one, do not find it helpful to see the comment
"Yes!" or "Me too" or "I'm sure I heard that in Nebraska in
the 1960s" at the very top of a long and discursive quoted
message. If it's really necessary to quote the entirety of a
previous message, or several such, by all means do so. But
usually responses are relevant to only a small part of an
earlier message.

Trimming this message down to its relevant parts, and adding
one's response in the appropriate place, not only ensures that
the sequence is clear and the background is known (whether
because one has forgotten the original discussion, not
received it because of mail gremlins, or whatever), but that
readers know what the new post is actually about. And that
bandwidth--network, storage, or perceptual--isn't wasted.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED