[arch-general] Top Posting Revisited

[Tom Gundersen]

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 11:26 AM, Raghavendra D Prabhu
<raghu.prabhu13 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I use
> inline replies too given the circumstances. However, to avoid scrolling
> you can try using t-prot for folding. While replying, vim also folds my
> messages.

This whole discussion has nothing to do with scrolling, most mail
clients can fold the quoted parts out. However, sometimes you want to
see the quote to get the context of what is being replied to. In this
case you don't want lots of unnecessary stuff, but just enough to
understand.

> In mutt, you cannot limit the quote context I guess and I
> don't want to limit the context by manually deleting the lines;

Unless you want to piss people off, you should. Personally, I'm likely
to just ignore emails that are a mess. I assume many others do the
same.

> however
> I would also like to add as to how do you decide how much context to
> retain in a non-inline reply -- too less will mean no context at all and
> too much may mean some readers complain.

Don't use non-inline. In the case of inline replies you want to keep
just enough so that the answer you are writing makes sense. This
requires a bit of thinking and a bit of effort, but if you can't take
the time to do that, why should people take the time to read your
email?

> Again, if you think netiquette conceived by you/few is the final word
> carved over iron, then I have no issues.

This "netiquette" is indeed not followed by the populace at large, but
in mailinglists for opensource projects it is generally agreed upon
and expected behavior. If you want to be taken seriously you better
follow it. When in Rome...

Cheers,

Tom