[arch-general] Quoting of E-mails

[Steve Holmes]

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I've been seeing some very passionate pleeds in posts lately
concerning top-posting of replies.  I, for one, don't really mind
seeing top-posted e-mails like that because I can see the reply
quickly and if the thread is current in my mind, I don't have to
re-read the old stuff over and over again.  Nothing annoys me more
than haveing to page through five generations of past messages in a
single thread to get all the way to the bottom just to have a single
line of text say something like "Thank you" or "I agree" or whatever.
The only thing that makes bottom-posting, like this bareable to me at
all is Mutt's 'S' command which takes the cursor down to the unquoted
text for much quicker reading.

If bottom-posting is so passionately desirable, then may I suggest
people trim down the history of a thread to the most recent 1 or 2
generations back.  Or maybe even better, just reply with no quoting
and and briefly summarize the quoted context.  Yeah, I realize quoting
past context is more work.  I just find that when people top-post, I
can seem to get through the mud a lot faster.  

Of course interlacing replies with quoted text makes a lot of sense
when you have multiple issues or questions being asked.

Anyway, just my thoughts, not trying to war or any of that, just
trying to see the proes and cons of e-mail styles.
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