On Sat, 17 Feb 2018 07:23:32 +1100, Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
wrote:
>Thomas Kellerer <spam_eater@gmx.net> writes:
>
>> Plus: trimming the original content, so that not the whole email
>> thread is repeated in the quote.
>
>While I'm happy to comply, I disagree with trimming/editing the
>thread. Certainly made sense when networks were slower and MUAs were
>less sophisticated, but these days I prefer using a MUA which is able to
>fold the original content and keep all the content in the message. This
>reduces confusion, misunderstanding and incorrect attribution arising
>from poor editing and makes it easy to reference the full discussion in
>one spot rather than having to go back through messages putting it all
>back together. YMMV.
>
>Tim
The problem is that conversations rarely remained confined to a single
topic [this thread for example 8-)].
The list servers do have message size limits (independent of any email
server limits). It isn't a problem for simple text messages, but a
lot of people now are sending MIME messages that include all the text
twice (or 3 times) plus embedded HTML+CSS formatting.
On some lists, I have seen MIME messages (mostly sent from Google
Groups users) that contain - not kidding - 5,000+ lines of hidden
HTML+CSS surrounding a few lines of comment.
I agree with you that messages should stand alone wrt to the subject
they address. It's just that, too often, messages that contain a lot
of quoted material have wandered considerably and so are mostly noise.
YMMV,
George