> So, if you are in a mailing list with mostly net-savvy people, you > will appear rude if you break the customs.
This is a good point, but one of the things I have always found distasteful not only about 'net-savvy people but indeed about almost every group of people who strongly identify themselves with that group is the fundamentalist zeal with which they jealously protect what they consider the marks of belonging to that group. I honestly don't have the foggiest clue why anyone would give a rat's ass whether email replies include tails or not---except for the one reason that has been given many times so far in this discussion, that it's what "people who are in the know" do. I think those sorts of reasons---and the pejorative lingo that goes along with them, such as dismissing someone as a "newbie" when he does not adhere to the meaningless little practices the performance of which indicates that someone really has 'net savvy (and doesn't that really make you cool, when you can demonstrate through your superior email usage that you've been immersing yourself in the minutiae of the 'net subculture more intensely than your correspondent?)---I think these reasons fall into the same small-minded and prejudicial category as the behavior of those at the OOPSLA conference who pre-emptively dismiss Lorin because he doesn't have the marks of belonging to their little subculture, viz. a college diploma. I have never liked humans when they congregate into groups larger than about 8. This knee-jerk jealousy of group identity is one of the primary reasons why. And, just one more time, with feeling: I do not accept arguments about how it saves time, makes reading more pleasant, blah blah blah. In my experience it demonstrably costs much more time and is much more irritating to prune tails in emails I am writing than to ignore tails in emails I am reading. But since almost everyone else on the list seems to disagree, I will try to trim my tails. If I forgt sometimes, I apologize in advance. E
