4 ms·

> With the exception of free software mailing lists, people simply do not know how to use email. Bottom quoting is the default. We can thank Microsoft for that

by u801e 9y ago

> With the exception of free software mailing lists, people simply do not know how to use email. Bottom quoting is the default. We can thank Microsoft for that one, I think. I can't understand why anyone thought it was a good idea to attach the previous message to the bottom. Most people just accept this as the way email is and never question how unbelievably stupid it is. I think a lot of email clients expect that type of quoting/top-posting (conversation view for example). Another problem is that certain mobile email clients make it impossible to not bottom-quote. That is, they just present a composition window and don't give you the ability to position your text within the quoted email you're responding to. Though I do find it interesting that people on Hacker news, Slashdot, and reddit will generally follow the convention of responding inline if they quote the parent post in their response. I don't recall anyone ever following the email "convention" of bottom-quoting.

Santosh83 9y ago
Though HN doesn't make it easy to do inline quoting. I tried it just now, only to have my nicely formatted text block overflow due to the browser's text area idiosyncrasies. Most people actually don't quote at all. It's just that the majority of mail clients out there, including the Web ones, quote the message being replied to and position the cursor above it, and no one takes the effort reformat it, or remove it. Software needs to make it easy to choose portions of the message and automatically quote them in replies. Currently the usability of that aspect is broken. You have to cut and paste manually. A lot of messaging systems don't even add '>' marks.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > Though HN doesn't make it easy to do inline quoting. I tried it just now, only to have my nicely formatted text block overflow due to the browser's text area idiosyncrasies. On HN, this is handled entirely by wetware - there's an unofficial convention. You quote the relevant part of a post by preceding it with '>' (but not turning it into a text area!). Many people (myself included) also italicize part after the '>' to make it more visually different from their response.
mseebach 9y ago
> Though I do find it interesting that people on Hacker news, Slashdot, and reddit will generally follow the convention of responding inline Actually, they don't. Most posts don't quote their parent at all, it's a unitary response to the full parent post. Which is what bottom-quoting does - it doesn't actually quote the parent post, it leaves it in for reference (which makes sense because email clients, unlike HN, are pretty crap at keeping track of conversation threads). Very few people communicate in the super-structured way that in-line quoting implies, that you go through an email sentence(/line/paragraph) by sentence(/..) and respond individually to them. It's super-arrogant, and thankfully getting very rare, to insist that your way, just because it was first, and then completely failed to catch on, is the one true way and people are "unbelievably stupid" to disagree with you.
- u801e 9y ago
  >> Though I do find it interesting that people on Hacker news, Slashdot, and reddit will generally follow the convention of responding inline if they quote the parent post in their response. > Actually, they don't. Most posts don't quote their parent at all I never said that most people do. When you quoted my post in your response, you left off the clause where I said: "if they quote the parent post in their response". > It's super-arrogant, and thankfully getting very rare, to insist that your way, just because it was first, and then completely failed to catch on, is the one true way and people are "unbelievably stupid" to disagree with you. This aptly demonstrates that there value quoting the relevant parts of the post you're responding to. In this case, you're attributing statements that someone else made to me. If you want to argue against what you're quoting, then you should reply to the post that actually made those statements.
- torrent-of-ions 9y ago
  The beauty of inline quoting is that if you don't see a need to use it then you don't. It is in no way arrogant to suggest a method of replying which is unambiguous. Nobody is suggesting that it is used in places in which it is not necessary. I hate to think of the hours wasted due to ambiguity in email replies. More often than not people end up using the telephone or meeting in person which wastes even more time rather than learning how to be clear. I don't understand why all effort to be clear and precise goes out of the window when dealing with email.

by u801e 9y ago

Santosh83 9y ago

Though HN doesn't make it easy to do inline quoting. I tried it just now, only to have my nicely formatted text block overflow due to the browser's text area idiosyncrasies. Most people actually don't quote at all. It's just that the majority of mail clients out there, including the Web ones, quote the message being replied to and position the cursor above it, and no one takes the effort reformat it, or remove it. Software needs to make it easy to choose portions of the message and automatically quote them in replies. Currently the usability of that aspect is broken. You have to cut and paste manually. A lot of messaging systems don't even add '>' marks.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
> Though HN doesn't make it easy to do inline quoting. I tried it just now, only to have my nicely formatted text block overflow due to the browser's text area idiosyncrasies. On HN, this is handled entirely by wetware - there's an unofficial convention. You quote the relevant part of a post by preceding it with '>' (but not turning it into a text area!). Many people (myself included) also italicize part after the '>' to make it more visually different from their response.

mseebach 9y ago

> Though I do find it interesting that people on Hacker news, Slashdot, and reddit will generally follow the convention of responding inline Actually, they don't. Most posts don't quote their parent at all, it's a unitary response to the full parent post. Which is what bottom-quoting does - it doesn't actually quote the parent post, it leaves it in for reference (which makes sense because email clients, unlike HN, are pretty crap at keeping track of conversation threads). Very few people communicate in the super-structured way that in-line quoting implies, that you go through an email sentence(/line/paragraph) by sentence(/..) and respond individually to them. It's super-arrogant, and thankfully getting very rare, to insist that your way, just because it was first, and then completely failed to catch on, is the one true way and people are "unbelievably stupid" to disagree with you.

u801e 9y ago
>> Though I do find it interesting that people on Hacker news, Slashdot, and reddit will generally follow the convention of responding inline if they quote the parent post in their response. > Actually, they don't. Most posts don't quote their parent at all I never said that most people do. When you quoted my post in your response, you left off the clause where I said: "if they quote the parent post in their response". > It's super-arrogant, and thankfully getting very rare, to insist that your way, just because it was first, and then completely failed to catch on, is the one true way and people are "unbelievably stupid" to disagree with you. This aptly demonstrates that there value quoting the relevant parts of the post you're responding to. In this case, you're attributing statements that someone else made to me. If you want to argue against what you're quoting, then you should reply to the post that actually made those statements.
torrent-of-ions 9y ago
The beauty of inline quoting is that if you don't see a need to use it then you don't. It is in no way arrogant to suggest a method of replying which is unambiguous. Nobody is suggesting that it is used in places in which it is not necessary. I hate to think of the hours wasted due to ambiguity in email replies. More often than not people end up using the telephone or meeting in person which wastes even more time rather than learning how to be clear. I don't understand why all effort to be clear and precise goes out of the window when dealing with email.