On 26/03/10 22:26, Steve Tompkins-MacQueen wrote: > Opps sorry I had not relised I had bin cousing/makeing a problem > > Do's this relate to including passed messages in the replay making replays > longer and longer each time a replay is included? >
Phil already responded to this but as listadmin and the one who started this, yes that's pretty much it. There have been many a flame war (long debate) on this subject in many places, and I really don't want this list to go that way. It's quite understandable that many people here will not have sufficient experience to have seen both sides of the argument, and indeed may disagree! However, if person A writes something, and person B replies including all of A's message, and B replies including everything again, then very quickly each message is including multiple copies of the original message and all replies, and the messages grow very quickly. Then when the digest goes out it will include all of these messages which contain multiple messages, and then someone will reply to the digest without trimming it, and .... My *personal* opinion is that: - Including all of the previous message is always bad. Even in conversations with support staff where I tend to "top post" so that the full conversation is always in the email (in case someone else picks it up at any point), I will trim out long signatures and other rubbish to make the whole conversation easier to scan through. - For most email replies, I will remove everything that is not directly relevant to my reply, then intersperse my comments within the original in a "conversational" style. Often (as with this email) there is only one point I am replying to so this is similar to "bottom posting", although see below. - Top-posting (putting replies at the top, the default for any email clients) is good in some circumstances but not for mailing lists. But removing stuff that will never need to be referred to (eg email signatures) is still sensible. - Bottom-posting (putting the reply at the bottom) is fine, but to scroll to the bottom of a long email and add a comment at the bottom without trimming the rest of the content is to miss the point. The messages build up just as quickly, and they're just a pain to scroll through (especially on mobile devices). The most important thing to remember is that your reply is *your* email. You have complete control over it (and responsibility for it). You don't have to include anything or can include everything, but either of these (and anywhere in between) will affect the readability of the email and therefore how many people will read it. So you should (my opinion) do your best to make it easy to see your comments, easy to see what they relate to, and you should remove any other wood that might obscure the trees. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG _______________________________________________ Peterboro mailing list Peterboro@mailman.lug.org.uk https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/peterboro
