On Tue, 28 Jun 2016 10:01 am, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote: > The Outlook style works well in a business environment where the > recipient is likely the original sender of the quoted text, and doesn't > need the context -- the quoted copy is just a courtesy copy in this case.
No it doesn't work well. It is shit in business environments too. It only works well in one tiny subset of cases: (1) Fred sends an email to George. (2) George responds with a short response that stands alone, or can be interpreted based only on the subject line. ~ Subject: Drinks on Friday ~ From: Fred ~ ~ Hey all, we're going to the Fox and Wheelbarrow for drinks on ~ Friday at 6pm. Join us! ~ Subject: Re: Drinks on Friday ~ From George ~ ~ See you there! ~ ~ === Message from Fred === ~ > Hey all, we're going to the Fox and Wheelbarrow for drinks on ~ > Friday at 6pm. Join us! That's about the level of conversation where top posting works well. But as soon as you get into actual meaningful dialog which requires more than a one or two sentence reply, ESPECIALLY if you ask more than one question, top posting is *shit*. ~ Subject: Project X ~ From: Fred ~ ~ Hey George, we have a few issues to go over regarding Project X. ~ For starters, if we are to have any hope of meeting the deadline, ~ the team is going to need to put in some overtime. Do you think ~ Jane will authorise overtime payments, or should we get time off ~ in lieu? ~ Also, there's a problem with Alex, the web designer. You know ~ that he's a subcontractor, right? Well apparently Accounts hasn't ~ been paying his invoices, and he's threatening to put us on stop ~ and go legal. What should we do? ~ Subject: Re: Project X ~ From: George ~ ~ Yeah, sure, I agree. ~ ~ === Message from Fred === ~ > Hey George, we have a few issues to go over regarding Project X. ~ > For starters, if we are to have any hope of meeting the deadline, ~ > the team is going to need to put in some overtime. Do you think ~ > Jane will authorise overtime payments, or should we get time off ~ > in lieu? ~ > Also, there's a problem with Alex, the web designer. You know ~ > that he's a subcontractor, right? Well apparently Accounts hasn't ~ > been paying his invoices, and he's threatening to put us on stop ~ > and go legal. What should we do? Even if George isn't an absolute pillock and actually intends to give a useful answer, he has to work harder by explicitly referencing the questions being replied to: ~ Subject: Re: Project X ~ From: George ~ ~ Regarding the overtime question, I'll discuss it with Bob and get ~ him to talk to Jane. He's the project manager, let him earn his ~ salary. ~ Regarding Alex, he's a tit and I'm pretty sure he's overcharging ~ us, so this will be a good opportunity to get rid of him. Tell him ~ there's nothing you can do. Once he puts us on stop, we can steal ~ an in-house web developer from Sarah's team. I still owe her for ~ poaching Manjinder. It might only be an extra few words each time there's a change of topic, but it adds up. And because it does require those extra few words, and most people are lazy, most people don't bother: ~ Subject: Re: Project X ~ From: George ~ ~ I'll discuss it with Bob. ~ ~ He's a tit and I'm pretty sure he's overcharging us. Tell him ~ nothing. -- Steven “Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
