On Monday, August 27, 2018 10:18:28 AM dekkz...@gmail.com wrote: > On 08/27, Dave Sherohman wrote: > >The only problem I can ever recall seeing with mailing lists and long > >threads is when people don't trim the posts they're replying to. > > Isn't that usually due to topic drift in which case break the thread under > a new title?
No, I would say not -- well, maybe topic drift, but, too often I see an email with several points or suggestions in it, then someone quotes the entire post and says something like "I agree" or "that worked for me" at the bottom. Well, which do you agree with, which worked for you? I try to trim so that only points that I am responding to remain in the post, with just enough contextual information so someone can (imho, should) be able to make sense of it. And, even if the agree with everything (or everything worked), why leave all that old text in the post -- it is just extra stuff that my eye (and maybe brain) has to deal with. I don't always follow or manage to comply with the following rule, but have it as one of my goals: "The writer should make it easy on the reader -- there is only one writer, but there could be millions of readers." (Now, granted, there is also the aphorisim (right word) that: "I did not have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a long one", and, indeed, sometimes I don't take the time to write a short letter (or enough knowledge / understanding to do so.) Hope everyone has a good day!
