As a veteran of Usenet, I've only grudgingly come to accept the practice of putting all responses to an email in a lump at the top, with the quoted text below. I much prefer to have the responses interleaved with the original points being responded to. I've pretty clearly lost this one, though, and I've learned to live with it.
One consequence of this practice that continues to drive me nuts, though, is the way that people have become conditioned to believe that nothing below the first quote header exists. This is exacerbated by things like GMail, which explicitly hides quoted text. Thus, I'm constantly getting emails which consist of a couple of sentences of new material at the top, followed by ten levels of quote-and-reply going back a week or more. This is particularly entertaining when the whole thing has been forwarded to a mailing list or group alias, and the quoted material includes a lengthy discussion of who should forward it in order for the message to have the greatest impact, giving a cynical air to the whole thing.
Look, people: the delete key is your friend. There is no need to send every bit of the exchange on to new people. If you're only responding to the most recent email, do us all a favor and delete the rest of the quoted text. If you're forwarding something on to a new audience, delete everything but the most essential part of the message. We don't need to see all the deliberation that went into the decision to forward: just send the key message.
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Amen!
Me too!
amen brother! amen!
Sounds like you might like this when it comes out:
http://wave.google.com/
I much prefer having responses interleaved too, with the original text denoted by '>' (another thing GMail tends to hide). I have a friend who likes interleaving his responses, except he uses colour to differentiate, which is particularly annoying since not all the devices I use to read email support colour. Plain text all the way!
Or you could just use gmail, and not have to deal with it...
On my old account, I had it set to not include quoted text. I guess gmail doesn't have that option.
It's not so annoying to me, because I don't often get into big conversations with lots of people replying.
1) Amen to the delete key!
2) Obligatory old joke:
Top posting!
> What's the most annoying thing in email?
You Obviously Don't Get It.
The whole point of top-quoting is to allow replies to be drafted without reading (much less snipping) the thread history.
I will note, for purposes of amusement, that this practice has turned out to be forensically useful. Microsoft (to name one) learned the hard way that message-expiration and archive-deletion rules are of no help when recent e-mails contain the entire history of the Corporation below the fold.
Chad, did you kill gmail today?
Preach it!
you just said that the entire point of a practice is to do something utterly pointless. since your sentence did not disappear in a puff of illogic, i must assume it was meant as a piece of surrealist-absurdist art.
Ha. I once wasted my time asking (politely) a listserv community to please use the delete key as you describe. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was out of line by people who love the endless repetition of re-posted comments.
Sigh. I could rant but I will spare you.
I dissent.
I'm with you on top-quoting vs bottom-quoting, of course, as are all Right Thinking People, and comes the revolution, people will be up against the wall over that.
However.
Especially in a business context, I *do* want the full conversation, because I'm usually not brought in to these things entirely too late. But then, I can just read (from the bottom, upwards, in a strange, unnatural vertical-stutter pattern, granted) from the beginning and bring myself up to speed. I don't actually want just the key decision. I do want the reasoning, or lack thereof, that went in to it, because if it's wrong I need to be able to do something about it. I want to be able to not ask questions that have already been asked and answered in the discussion before I got included.
And as an added benefit, it's an uncanny identifier of people too lazy to read the whole e-mail-- they'll invariably ask questions that were already answered in the back text.
And you could always, you know, just not read the old stuff. Bits are cheap nowadays, old man....
including the entire past conversation --- in a strange, unnatural, vertical-stutter, backwards pattern --- is not, in fact, the only way to get the entire context and history that went into a decision. getting that only necessitates not deleting carelessly or thoughtlessly.
what i tend to get (and end up deleting) are countless, pointless .sig files longer than the one-line reply they follow. and anti-virus programs' auto-sigfiles. truly pointless stuff.
and all of it, of course, in a strict reverse chronological order, with NO accounting made for what's conceptually linked to what else. that, more than anything else, is the benefit of proper multilevel quoting, bottom-posting, and inserting one's own comments below the text they're referring to; it avoids that unnatural vertical stutter and visually links words that are connected by meaning and context.
it's not that i'm too lazy to read that vertical stutter, it's just that it's way too annoying and frustrating to be worth my time. it puts a burden on me that could so easily be avoided. i could be brought into the conversation and up to speed so much more smoothly and quickly, if only people would take the time to think about what they're writing and about how they're presenting it. top-posting without any slightest effort at editing for clarity --- that, to me, is the surer sign of laziness.
also, it's a sign that none of the other participants in the discussion felt their words were worth the effort to make clear and legible, at any point in the conversation. yet then they want to bring me into the whole mess, without making any effort at helping me out with it, landing that entire load on me alone. it's like being brought into the middle of a multi-hour meeting and handed an audio cassette of the proceedings up to that point, being told "listen to this in fast-forward and make yourself current with what we're discussing that way". why on earth would i want to do that?
I guess nobody got my joke at #2
I see no contradiction between writing my own text clearly, and continuing to include back text which still lets others speak for themselves.
Why do you, Nomen?
Are you charged by the bit? Where is the harm in including all previous messages? You don't have to read them, after all.
Yes, it is possible for the sender to look through the message trail, think, hmm, do I really need to include that paragraph, maybe I should delete that sig file, I don't suppose the time and date are really urgent there... or you could just ignore it all, with the option of scanning through it if you want the background.
nor do i, and i even stated as much fairly clearly. i just wish it was included in a readable, intelligible format. that unnatural vertical-stutter pattern (and thank you for that pithy description, by the way) which top-posting necessitates, precludes intelligibility.
writing clearly and intelligibly is not as simple as just slapping a line or two on at the top and expecting your reader to sort out all the historical context for themselves. it takes more effort than that. of course, maybe what you're talking about just isn't worth your effort to write it clearly --- but then, why should it be worth my effort to read?
indeed i don't have to read them. but you'd be surprised how often i am (unreasonably, in my opinion) expected to read them. there's no harm in handing new joiners-in to your multi-hour meeting an audio cassette of what's already been discussed; they don't have to listen to it --- they can perfectly well toss it in the trash, it doesn't cost them anything. but i find folks expect me to listen to the email equivalent of those audio tapes (in fast-forward, too, to keep an analogy of that unnatural vertical stutter that impedes comprehension) and take umbrage if i just ask for a summary of what the problem they want me to weigh in on might be. "it's on the audio tape, fast-forward it!"
and so, to keep peace with my coworkers, i have to do. because they evidently think their words, their arguments, and their conclusions are not important enough to put any effort into stating clearly, but my time and effort is perfectly worth spending on sorting out the illegible, unnatural, stuttering mess. i think they're being intellectually lazy by forcing me to do that; and you seem to think i'm not losing anything.
Parts of usenet aren't much better now, except that people include the entire previous thread and then post one extra line on the bottom.
you'd be surprised how often i am (unreasonably, in my opinion) expected to read them
_That_ is the problem, not the inclusion of previous messages. If someone sends you a message, it is their responsibility to identify the important information and make you aware of it. They can do that by repeating the information in the message they write, or by pointing it out to you ("be sure to read Mike's Wednesday email below").
Deleting or not deleting previous messages in the thread is beside the point.