Klarinet Archive - Posting 000044.txt from 2005/12

From: Tim Roberts <timr@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Trimming
Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 12:37:29 -0500

Folks, PLEASE take the time to trim the quoting of old messages when you
reply. In this morning's digest, there were five messages:
* 7 lines new, 25 lines quoted
* 1 line new, 144 lines quoted
* 25 lines new, 170 lines quoted
* 3 lines new, 11 lines quoted (good!)
* 1 line new, 43 lines quoted

Deb, I don't know how long you've been using e-mail, but it looks like
you may be using Outlook or Outlook Express. Outlook uses "top
posting", which means that when you reply to a message, your response
goes at the top, with the old messages below. Many people consider this
to be a bad practice in a mailing list or newsgroup; I won't go that
far, but it does require extra vigilance on your part.

The problem is, because it puts your reply at the top, you don't notice
that there are hundreds of lines of old messages below it. When you're
reading individual messages, you can just read the interesting part and
skip to the next message. But for those of us who read the digest, we
can't do that. We have to scroll manually through all of that quoted
text, hoping that we don't miss the marker that marks the next message.
It's especially difficult when there are three or four signature lines
from old postings in there, as was the case today.

If you're responding to a question, keep the question there. Otherwise,
just select that old text and get rid of it before you respond.

--
Tim Roberts, timr@-----.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org