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Exactly this. This entry must have made sense way-back-when, but users today understand how to keep an email thread alive in their memory, and do not need to re

Exactly this. This entry must have made sense way-back-when, but users today understand how to keep an email thread alive in their memory, and do not need to read the entire chain, selectively quoted or not, before getting to the reply. A big impact may simply have been the advent of greater storage and bandwidth capacities allowing bigger emails. Along with that, email clients threading messages for you allows for relatively seamless review of history if necessary. And, the "selectively quote, then reply below" concept opens the door for biased selective quotations, where anyone getting in on a thread in the middle will likely be misunderstand the true context of the email they're receiving. Better to have the whole history, or none of it.

ColinWright 13y ago
> ... users today understand how to keep an email thread > alive in their memory, and do not need to read the > entire chain, selectively quoted or not, before getting > to the reply. I have literally hundreds of active email conversations. If you think I can understand a reply without first refreshing my memory about the context then you're much mistaken. What you say might be fine for people with just tens of conversations, but there's no way it works for me.
- GrinningFool 13y ago
  I'm in the same situation - and for those that I don't immediately recall, scrolling down is a simple matter...
  - ColinWright 13y ago
    See my reply to mattlutze: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6934612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6934612
- mattlutze 13y ago
  You're clearly outside 2sd so, while I appreciate that you have lots of email chains, you will obviously concede that your outlier case cannot define the conduct of the vast majority of internet users. An outlier case I hope you'll agree I acknowledged: > Along with that, email clients threading messages for you allows for relatively seamless review of history if necessary.
  - ColinWright 13y ago
    But when replying I don't want the full history. I end up with email messages that are thousands of lines long, usually with several threads in each, and finding the individual separate thread, spread throughout the entire quote-upon-quote-upon-quote ... is just not feasible. I'm left trawling through the same email many, many times, trying to extract the bits that matter to assemble them into a sensible, consistent, coherent narrative. At least, that's what happens when I use any of the standard email clients. but I don't. I use a really old, completely non-standard email client so I can, on every reply, extract the text that matters and assemble it into a single conversation, which I then continue. Yes, I freely admit I'm unusual, but I find it incredibly frustrating that all the systems other people say "Well, it works for me" are, in my context, unusable. And when you say: > Along with that, email clients threading messages > for you allows for relatively seamless review of > history if necessary. ... you are buying into the fallacy that what works for you should work for any right-minded person. Having clients thread the messages actually compounds the problems for me.

ColinWright 13y ago

> ... users today understand how to keep an email thread > alive in their memory, and do not need to read the > entire chain, selectively quoted or not, before getting > to the reply. I have literally hundreds of active email conversations. If you think I can understand a reply without first refreshing my memory about the context then you're much mistaken. What you say might be fine for people with just tens of conversations, but there's no way it works for me.

GrinningFool 13y ago
I'm in the same situation - and for those that I don't immediately recall, scrolling down is a simple matter...
- ColinWright 13y ago
  See my reply to mattlutze: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6934612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6934612
mattlutze 13y ago
You're clearly outside 2sd so, while I appreciate that you have lots of email chains, you will obviously concede that your outlier case cannot define the conduct of the vast majority of internet users. An outlier case I hope you'll agree I acknowledged: > Along with that, email clients threading messages for you allows for relatively seamless review of history if necessary.
- ColinWright 13y ago
  But when replying I don't want the full history. I end up with email messages that are thousands of lines long, usually with several threads in each, and finding the individual separate thread, spread throughout the entire quote-upon-quote-upon-quote ... is just not feasible. I'm left trawling through the same email many, many times, trying to extract the bits that matter to assemble them into a sensible, consistent, coherent narrative. At least, that's what happens when I use any of the standard email clients. but I don't. I use a really old, completely non-standard email client so I can, on every reply, extract the text that matters and assemble it into a single conversation, which I then continue. Yes, I freely admit I'm unusual, but I find it incredibly frustrating that all the systems other people say "Well, it works for me" are, in my context, unusable. And when you say: > Along with that, email clients threading messages > for you allows for relatively seamless review of > history if necessary. ... you are buying into the fallacy that what works for you should work for any right-minded person. Having clients thread the messages actually compounds the problems for me.