E-mail etiquette (was: Re: [lug] phantom irc traffic)

[Sean Reifschneider]

Hugh Brown wrote:
> also seems that top/bottom posting really is a vi vs. emacs sort of

Perhaps for personal e-mail, but leaving the entire message you are
replying to in place, whether above or below ones message, is never
appropriate for a mailing list with public archives.

It hasn't been until recently that I started doing the "top post" thing, I
historically avoided it.  However, I have a few people I regularly
correspond with that have told me that they want the context of previous
messages available, so for some people I will regularly reply with a top
post and quoting the rest of the message below my response.  Oh, and I
always sign off above the quoted text, so that people know that they don't
have to look through the quoted text to see if there's anything else they
need to look for that I've said.

For most people though, I will trim unless I think the context is really
important to my response.

As far as e-mail horror-stories, I have corresponded with some people who
will quote my message, and then just start typing their directly in my quoted
text.  Not separated out with their response after a blank line, just going
into a line of my text and they type a response.  Like:

>[...]
>Is this what you meant?  Yes Sean that's what I meant.  Can you clarify?  Yes, give me a phone call.  Thanks.  You're welcome.
>[...]

So I have to read all the text again, and remember what I wrote.  The stuff
I didn't write is their response.  :-)

I had a couple of this sort of response as part of the last group of people
I was interviewing.  One I remember in particular I replied saying "Sorry,
but I'm having a very hard time reading your reply.  Can you please
reformat it and send it again?" and the response was also unreadable, so I
gave up...

Of course, the other people who were able to fix their readability issues
in their responses gained points.  A problem is only a problem if you can't
fix it.  :-)

Sean
-- 
Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995: Ask me about High Availability