I feel it is very informative as the recipient. Yes, everything you need to know ought to be in the mail itself but often you need context or surrounding detai

I feel it is very informative as the recipient. Yes, everything you need to know ought to be in the mail itself but often you need context or surrounding details or just some information as to why the question arose. You can in the very most cases figure that out by skimming a couple of previous mails in the thread. Very quick and saves another round trip, which can be very annoying if you are on different time-zones.