dtobias wrote:The traditional netiquette for reply formatting is to trim down the original message ....
If somebody wants to see the entire past history of the thread, they should look at the earlier messages directly instead of expecting them to be wastefully attached in full (headers, trailers, and all) to every subsequent message.
I agree with you wrt discussion boards, forums, and groups.
A discussion forum is always located in one place. The user goes to look at the board/forum to see what is being talked about. The board/forum lists the discussion pieces in context and one can simply scroll down and everything is neatly presented....
... however emails are used differently.
For example, I often get copied in on replies to emails at work where people say "Richard, what do you think about this?". There is no central archive on a board/forum for that discussion. So my first thought might be "Have you told Bill?", but in TB there would be no record if Bill was copied in on the correspondence.
Even worse is my colleague who always deletes the previous text when he replies. Also you advocate selective quotes. As I said, this works for discussion boards, but in an email context this assumes:
- The recipients have been copied in on previous correspondence
- The recipients have neat filing systems so can easily find the previous emails
- The recipients have the time to go rummaging through their filing to find the previous emails
- The recipients are online, or had the psychic foresight that they needed to synchronize that particular set of emails from the public folder.
Anyway, that's all IMHO. Fortunately, TB does give the option to include previous emails in replies, and also gives the option to top post so that readers see the newest bit when they open the message instead of having to scroll down.