Trevor wrote ... <..>
> Maybe the group as a whole should consider opening a Poll - to > determine > the group member's preferences in a democratic manner, should the List > Owners and Moderators be ambivalent about which way the group ought to > post and there is some dissent rumbling away in the ranks?) Just to chip in with my two pennorth worth ... There are long standing conventions dating back to the dim distant origins of the internet covering this sort of thing On internet mailing lists and newsgroups, the convention is to quote enough of the original message to give context to the reply and to intersperse the comments at the relevant points Thus anybody reading the reply has a reference to the text to which the comment refers In the corporate world, the origins of top posting and quoting the whole of the previous text(s) goes back to the dreaded Lotus Notes which wouldn't work any other way. Outlook/Exchange is not the culprit (I'm using Outlook to write this post) although when HTML format is used interspersed commenting is not intuitive or easy. Then again, HTML has no place in email IMO! AFAIC, this list should broadly stick to the accepted conventions for Internet discussion groups whilst accepting that some list members using mobile devices (eg; Blackberry users) may not have the option. This is not one of the world's major problems and is perfectly tolerable! Of more importance, as George has to point out from time to time, is not to quote excessively. It's better to quote nothing at all than to over-quote (although judicious use of quoting is a good practice). Personally, I consider the matter of increasingly irrelevant subject lines to be a far more important subject for discussion - as a thread rambles (as they do) it's an easy matter to amend the subject to reflect the contents of the message but all too often it doesn't happen. Regards Bru
