Will they run together?

They way most people used to do it was quote a few key lines from each section of a previous post, then comment on that themselves, then if they had more to say about another part, they'd quote that part, then post their comments following it. Very easy to read.

I notice that people do the same thing in email. I always reply below anything I am qouting, but inevitably when I get replies that include quotes, the new message is always at the top. It may not all be the fault of the person replying because I've noticed most email programs put the cursor above the quote. My own email software EUDORA PRO does this, but I always scroll down.

The other thing that kills me is how people leave all the headers from a million previous forwards in there too. Or they quote the entire previous message just to give a one sentence reply, instead of just the key section of the previous message.

That's the default these days, but you can change that. Even in Eudora, IIRC. Look under the preferences/options for composing mail.

IMO, the default should be to place the cursor below the quote. But I suppose some "focus group" told MS etc that they didn't like scrolling down. One of the side effects of this stupid default is that people send ever lengthening e-mails, wasting bandwidth. In a year or two, after streamed video becomes commonplace, bandwidth will be precious again, and your ISP will charge you by the GB.

I think a carefully snipped reply shows that my correspondent took my maunderings seriously enough to compose their comments, rather than just typing.

BTW, my previous email client PMMail, which I can't use anymore since Bell Sympatico moved us all to a Hotmail proxy site, allowed you to highlight the part you wanted to quote before hitting reply. Very handy at times. Wish Tbird had that feature.

HTH

It's just newbies who don't want to bother learning netiquette. As always, bad manners drive out good. Been in a movie theatre lately? People act as if they were in the living rooms. Or bedrooms....

HTH -- wolf k.

Not nearly as annoying as having to scroll down through pages of quoted crapola to see the few new lines. Just look at the message above it in hte tree structure if you can't follow the thread.

"Wolf K." wrote in news:47bf5fc0$0$26327$ snipped-for-privacy@news.newshosting.com:

One argument I saw for placing the cursor above the quote is that you're starting in a perfect place to trim and snip the reply. That way, you don't wind up quoting someone's 5-screenfull long set of instructions just to say "Thanks for posting it."

Mozilla Mail (or it's predecessor Netscape Mail before AOL took over) would let you select where it puts the cursor.

Puckdropper

It could be but some people seem to be too lazy to snip the qouted text.

In most replies there is far too much quoted text, and qouting text from more than the last posting is senseless.

It is indeed.

It's amazing that some people will take the time to reply, but not the little bit of additional time to do it correctly and make their response easier to follow.

Trimming the post to which one is responding to, is the polite and proper method to employ. Doing so makes anyone reading your reply understand exactly what you're saying in relation tot he post you've replied to, without having to jump all around the place in an attempt to follow the train (pardon the pun) of thought.

That is very true Steve. It doesn't take very much time to trim the post to which one is replying to, but some people just can't control themselves. {;^)

That's not always true, Wolf. In the case of a lot of the participants in a regionally specific newsgroup here, it is inundated with people who have been around the block a number of times . It's more a case with these people of them being part of the "It's all about me" generation or attitude. They don't care how much they disrupt the group, they especially like to post advertisements in the discussion group instead of in the for sale groups, just to provoke long flaming threads. It's really a pathetic way of life for that type of person.

Well, sometimes, if you've been actively reading the threads, there won't be a message "above" it in the tree structure, because you've already read and possibly deleted that earlier one, and it's good to have a short quote to refresh your memory about what is being talked about. I know that I for one don't save very many if any messages once I've read them (not in the newsgroups I mean...in my email software I save lots of messages for future reference).

I save messages longer than almost any thread lasts - although I've seen a few "threads from Hell" that go for months - and let 40Tude Dialog purge them based on age. So I always have that ready reference just up the thread tree if I need to refer to it.

Steve Caple wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@40tude.net:

My newsreader has a "reconstruct thread" or "get parent" button. When I need the reference, I can use that quite easily. Sometimes I have to when someone snips all the text and replies.

Puckdropper

_______

Amen to that! Marshall

Nah, just another example of Windows scuzzware set to stoopid defaults.