plaintext email?

Tue Jan 15 15:55:53 UTC 2019

On 01/14/2019 10:24 PM, bzs at theworld.com wrote:
> I'd like to go on record as saying that I PREFER top-posting.

To each his / her own preference.

> Why dig through what you've already read to see the new comments?

So that the comments are in context (item followed by comment about 
item) of what they are about.

> Actually in an ideal world previous included bits would be links which 
> could optionally be expanded…

Well formatted text can be expanded and collapsed with proper MUA plugins.

This means that a long inline message can be viewed as one (collapsed) 
line of quoted text followed by multiple lines of reply.  Lather, rinse, 
repeat as necessary.

> …via one shared remote copy but lo I wander.

That's a nice idea.  But you start to get into even more complications. 
Many of which are related to security and capability to access central 
shared copy.  Such isn't possible with email accessed via UUCP sneaker 
net, where as quoted text is.  ;-)

> You should try some of the internet governance (I know, oxymoron) 
> lists where people will inline a megabyte of discussion to add just 
> "+1!" or "I agree!" or "congrats!" in the middle or bottom.

Arguably the fact that they have done that is in and of itself an abuse, 
specifically around the quote to new content ratio.

If you use quote collapsing, then it would appear as one line followed 
by the reactionary response with the possibility of one line below.

A couple of analogies:

How well do you think a teacher would respond if a student stapled a 
sheet of paper with their answers to all the questions without numbers 
to the top of the quiz with room to answer the questions in line?

How would you like to receive edits / comments / suggestions to a paper 
that you wrote as one lump at the top or bottom without any reference to 
page / paragraph / sentence / word that the comment is about?

Both of these methods do technically provide the answer to the 
questions.  But they impart much more load on the recipient to identify 
and / or locate the relevant section that they are in response to.

Conversely, if Question and Answer documents are in multiple sets of 
that order, Question followed by Answer, it's quite easy to find 
associated items.

Finally, set the example that you want others to follow.

-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

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