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When I reply to a message on a mailing list, what is the “right” way to do it?
Should I be deleting previous thread text from my response?
Should I be adding anything in?
Is there some general ideas for the “right” way to reply to a message on a list?
as
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On Mar 20, 2015, at 08:19 AM, Andrew Stuart wrote:
Of course, Wikipedia is the font of all human knowledge and truth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post
This is an interesting question for me because I think the netiquette rules I've been using for decades may be changing.
I've always found it proper and useful to include the quoted material of the original message, but trim the quotes to just the bit you are responding to. I'd call this interleaved-with-trimming.
Top posting has always been a serious breach of netiquette.
What I've found interesting is that some of my correspondents (off-list) actually *want* top posting, and find anything else confusing. I think I understand why in at least some cases; Apple Mail top posts by default, and some folks just don't like to go digging around in the email to find the answer they're looking for. I've actually tried to accommodate that when sending email to them.
I see more and more mailing list and group emails not doing any trimming. I find that incredibly hard to parse because if they *are* interleaving responses, you have to hunt through a huge amount of text. To make things worse, almost the entire conversation is retained so responses to responses to responses just clutter things up and make more noise. I wonder if webmail u/is like gmail (which I don't use) encourage this style.
And don't get me started on HTML-only email or some reply styles that make no distinction between the quoted original text and the reply. I can barely read those.
As the article mentions, there are enough different styles in widespread use that it's best to conform to the norms of the community. My own feeling is that interleaved-with-trimming is the most conducive to mailing list discussions.
Cheers, -Barry
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I was thinking that people new to using Mailman could get a very simple email “welcome to this list” on subscription, with brief pointers on how to do things. To the uninitiated there might be a sense of not wanting to engage for fear of breaking something or doing it wrong.
I’m certain that the vast majority of less technical users don’t know how conversation threads work.
For example I’m still not really clear on which field the list address should go into, and does it matter what other addresses go into to and cc fields. I suspect it doesn’t matter much but I haven’t yet gone to the trouble of working it out (hey that’s what I’m doing now!).
as
On 20 Mar 2015, at 8:53 am, Barry Warsaw <barry@list.org> wrote:
On Mar 20, 2015, at 08:19 AM, Andrew Stuart wrote:
Of course, Wikipedia is the font of all human knowledge and truth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post
This is an interesting question for me because I think the netiquette rules I've been using for decades may be changing.
I've always found it proper and useful to include the quoted material of the original message, but trim the quotes to just the bit you are responding to. I'd call this interleaved-with-trimming.
Top posting has always been a serious breach of netiquette.
What I've found interesting is that some of my correspondents (off-list) actually *want* top posting, and find anything else confusing. I think I understand why in at least some cases; Apple Mail top posts by default, and some folks just don't like to go digging around in the email to find the answer they're looking for. I've actually tried to accommodate that when sending email to them.
I see more and more mailing list and group emails not doing any trimming. I find that incredibly hard to parse because if they *are* interleaving responses, you have to hunt through a huge amount of text. To make things worse, almost the entire conversation is retained so responses to responses to responses just clutter things up and make more noise. I wonder if webmail u/is like gmail (which I don't use) encourage this style.
And don't get me started on HTML-only email or some reply styles that make no distinction between the quoted original text and the reply. I can barely read those.
As the article mentions, there are enough different styles in widespread use that it's best to conform to the norms of the community. My own feeling is that interleaved-with-trimming is the most conducive to mailing list discussions.
Cheers, -Barry
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Andrew Stuart writes:
For example I’m still not really clear on which field the list address should go into,
To or CC. Most Mailman lists will refuse to accept mail BCC'd to the list.
and does it matter what other addresses go into to and cc fields.
It doesn't matter for mechanical purposes. To, CC, and BCC are all routed the same way (using RCPT TO aka "envelope recipient" at the SMTP level), and To and CC are handled the same way by almost all receiving MUAs (BCC is, of course, as invisible to the receiving MUA as it is to the human).
So To is your target, and CC is the innocent bystander, and BCC are the sniggerers in the peanut gallery, as always.
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On 03/19/2015 10:39 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
There is one case with Mailman lists where it matters, at least in MM 2.1, but I think MM 3 too.
If a list member has 'avoid dups' set and that member is a Cc: addressee of a post, that member will not receive the post from the list AND that member's address will be removed from the Cc: list of the post delivered to the other list members. This is not the case if the member is a To: adressee; the member's list copy is still suppressed by 'avoid dups', but her addresds is not removed from the To: of the post from the list.
The removal is to prevent Cc: lists from growing too large in threads with many participants.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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Mark Sapiro writes:
Does this actually work? In practice, I get the feeling that a large minority at least unsets "nodupes". XEmacs lists default to nodupes, but about 1/3 of users have them unset, and a quick eyeball suggests that over 95% of the ones with nodupes set have never posted or been cc'd on the list.
I would say that the effect that such members get many fewer automatic CCs from reply-all would be the main reason for the removal. Even if it doesn't work this is the right thing to do.
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On Sat, 21 Mar 2015 13:35:52 +0900 "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote:
Hello Stephen,
Does this actually work? In practice, I get the feeling that a large minority at least unsets "nodupes". XEmacs lists default to nodupes,
I always turn NoDupes off. The reason being that I *want* the list copy, but *not* the personal copy of the email(1). IOW, the complete opposite of what NoDupes does. Obviously, there is no way that MailMan can achieve this.
(1) The personal copy often fails to get filtered to the relevant folder because of missing headers, change in Subject line, etc.
-- Regards _ / ) "The blindingly obvious is / _)rad never immediately apparent" People stare like they've seen a ghost Titanic (My Over) Reaction - 999
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On 03/19/2015 02:53 PM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
+1
Although, I have fought and lost the battles with my cycling club list members.
On our main discussion list, digests are virtually unreadable at times because it is nearly impossible to find the original material in the multiple quotes of quotes of quotes, and similarly for archives.
And some people on the list continue to insist that they like top posting with full quoting because they only have to read the latest post in a thread (albeit from the bottom up), even though it's been pointed out to them multiple times that threads are trees and even if everyone quotes everything, any particular leaf only contains the posts on that branch.
Top posting with full quoting is also encouraged by MUAs like Gmail's web client that hide the quoted material unless you ask for it.
I do understand that in some business situations (contract negotiations, attorney/client communication and the like), it is useful and pretty much demanded that each message contain the full transcript of what went before, but this has no place on an email discussion list.
This is a major hot-button issue for me, The above is only scratching the surface.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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Seems like there are various approaches and opinions.
Is it practical to come up with a very short list of instructions for non-highly-technical end users to give them so hints and confidence to get started using a list?
Thinking a clerk in the accounts department at large-corporation-X has been subscribed to the list annualreport@list.bigcorp.example.com
How can we support them in rapidly becoming confident enough to post and use the list?
as
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Andrew Stuart wrote:
Maybe you could put some examples on a web page of what you consider to be desirable quoting practices, in the hope that new users might take up those practices and encourage older users to conform. But if they're using the same email client they use for their other day to day email, they'll most likely just do what they've always done. And it's one thing to berate users of some obsure special interest mailing list for their quoting practices, it's another thing if it's your boss.
I think the best you can usually hope for is that some of them will trim the quotes occasionally. In the end, unless the discussion gets very complicated, it usually doesn't really matter as far as people being able to understand messages is concerned. Lots of repeated quoting can make messages big though.
Peter Shute
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On Thu, 2015-03-19 at 17:45 -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote:
Top posting with full quoting is also encouraged by MUAs like Gmail's web client that hide the quoted material unless you ask for it.
It's also encouraged by iDevices with iOS using mail clients which insert the quoted material _below_ the user's sig. Converting to bottom posted isn't really trivial and involves a bit of cutting and pasting.
This is one of the reasons I've long ago abdicated my job as list moderator for _all_ the lists I host and to which I also belong. I'm happy to be the technical admin, and deal with problems with spam and the occasional technically disruptive member or ex-member, but I don't want to get into the day-to-day decisions about what's allowed or not on a list.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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At 07:45 PM 3/19/2015, Mark Sapiro wrote:
Everyone should remember that your needs are not necessarily the same as others. I run some 250 lists that primarily cater to blind persons, and top posting is the norm. While we can sort it all out, despite quoting style, top posting is the easiest in most situations. There is no one right, or wrong way.
David Andrews and long white cane Harry.
E-Mail: dandrews@visi.com or david.andrews@nfbnet.org
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On 3/19/2015 6:59 PM, David Andrews wrote:
And for those lists, it's accepted practice because it works for them. Most of the lists I'm on highly discourage top-posting, which works well for their readers. (I observe that the message I'm replying to was entire bottom-posted.)
While we can sort it all out, despite quoting style, top posting is the easiest in most situations.
Not sure what you mean about quoting there as top-posting pretty much dictates the quoting style- everything from previous messages is below the new material; it's simply a matter of how much you remove. So even based solely on the comments on this list, I think you'll find that top-posting is not "the easiest". Well, maybe "easiest" ("laziest"?) in the sense of effort, but not "best" or "most useful" or "easiest to follow".
And for forestall the arguments about not trimming messages- sure, memory is cheaper now, comm lines are faster, drives are bigger, most people use GUI mail readers, but that's no reason to cart around sometimes thousands of no-longer-relevant verbiage. Especially when adding a two-line comment...
Anyway, YMMV, mine does.
z!
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If you're referring to the problem of getting the selection boundaries in exactly the right spot, I'm well familiar with that. So easy to get them within one or two characters, but requires excessive concentration and effort to get them closer. Don't know why they don't add cursor keys to help with it.
Peter Shute
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On Mar 20, 2015, at 03:23 AM, Peter Shute <pshute@nuw.org.au> wrote:
If you're referring to the problem of getting the selection boundaries in exactly the right spot, I'm well familiar with that. So easy to get them within one or two characters, but requires excessive concentration and effort to get them closer. Don't know why they don't add cursor keys to help with it.
NextApp Keyboard does have arrow keys, as well as a key to switch from cursor movement to selection movement and other useful things missing from most soft keyboards. It's not nearly as easy as with a real keyboard, but it does at least provide the functionality.
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jdd writes:
This is true.
On many lists I frequent, people have changed their .sig in their smartphone to "Sent from my <smartphone>, very sorry about the rude quoting." :-) But the people I respect (eg, Guido van Rossum) often write the apology explicitly in a large minority of their smartphone posts when they fail to trim.
OTOH, I ditched AppleMail for the Gmail app very quickly. That makes it very easy to nuke the quotes (just delete the ellipsis). I write one sentence to summarize the point I'm replying to and then what I have to say. (I don't do list mail from my smartphone much, though.)
I think the best solution for most replies (unless you're in Guido's position of leadership) is to bite the bullet and wait until you're at a terminal to post.
Steve
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On Don, 2015-03-19 at 17:45 -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote: [...]
also +1 for the "quote only relevant and answer inline directly below it" style - an email is written once and read (hopefully;-) more often so it is actually extremely unfriendly (because time killing) to all others to make a mail not as simple and easy readable as possible to save everybody's time (otherwise people might not even read the mail past line 2 and after a few of this mails, one might remember the "\seen" - if not worse - flag in the sieve script).
They seem to read only a few mails a day and the contents must be quite simple. Otherwise one - at least me - really needs to know the context and which aspect of the quoted/original mail is actually meant/answered.
The various Outlooks have the same design fault - especially as it's the default behaviour.
Well, I store such possibly important mails (ans MLs usually have archives somewhere) so full-quoting everything on every mail is pretty pointless (and in some "commercial" situations one would archive every mail automatically anyways ...).
And most people make no difference on the situations and/or circumstances (like in "I always sent mail in this way so it must be correct!").
In lots of proprietary/hidden "environments" people actually do not think about the information flow and solve lots of problems (not all!) with MLs but just sent mail to (presumed) involved people. And if a new one is included, one - or more all of them - have the excuse to have always full-quoted/top-posted everything. The real fun starts if such mails leave the company and the outside gets knowledge on who is really involved on the other side and factual internal details ....
Kind regards, Bernd
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On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 05:45:58PM -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote:
I don't think it is useful. It might be demanded, but that's just because it's the convention, not because it's useful. If it were useful to include a full transcript of everything that went on prior in each and every message, lawyers would do so with paper correspondence (and charge the client for photocopying). But they don't.
I've been through a number of (thankfully minor) legal actions, and going through conventional top-posted emails is *painful*. It makes searching for keywords ineffective in all the email clients I've used. Nobody ever bothers to read or go through the quoted transcripts, why would you read the quoted-to-the-nth-degree text when you can read the original?
The worst example I found was quoted twenty-one levels deep. A three line response plus sig (naturally including one of those nonsense legal disclaimers about not reading the email if you aren't the intended recipient) followed by about thirty pages of quoted text starting with > then >> then >>> and so on to >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>. And it was my job to go through it, and the rest of the emails in the thread, in both directions, looking for anything relevent to the legal action. Even though I wasn't actively reading the quoted sections, the sheer volume of cruft to wade through is brain-melting. Counting the entire conversation, the original post was duplicated something like fifty or sixty times.
Fun times.
but this has no place on an email discussion list.
Agreed! But too many people replying with their smart phones and iProducts can't do anything else...
This is a major hot-button issue for me, The above is only scratching the surface.
I feel your pain :-)
-- Steve
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On 3/19/15 5:53 PM, Barry Warsaw wrote: people to top post is that their client will show in the message list a summary of the first line of the message, and they want that to be the new content to see if it is worth reading, as opposed to the quote of the message they have already decided to read or not. (of course, the answer is that it would be better if the client showed the first non-quote line if possible).
-- Richard Damon
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Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> wrote:
Tanstaafl replied:
And that is actually one of the few reasonable reasons that I've ever seen supporting the argument...
I somewhat concur; I understand the desire for the feature, and I think this is the first time I've seen a reasonable reason for it as well. I think it's a nice feature to have, generally. But I don't think this justifies top-posting because I'd prefer clients to collapse quoted material, attribution, and then show the first line (or few lines) of the message. I still prefer the logical point-counterpoint of an edited response I can read from the top down.
I also think we should stop offering mailing list digests, particularly because I don't see a need for them now that bandwidth to most Internet users is plentiful (plentiful enough to see widespread use of HTML email, for instance) and so many users pick gratis email hosting that imposes no quota on them (to maximize effectiveness of spying on users?). I'd be willing to reconsider my opinion on digests if there were some compelling reason(s) to continue digests. So far all I see in digests are the bad points: digests break threading, replies to digests contain far more quoted material than original material, and top posting makes digests even harder for me to figure out what is being replied to.
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A couple points on top-posting...
I'm a top-poster and not ashamed of it. If I'm following a message thread, I remember the discussion and don't want to have to scroll through a weeks worth of responses just to get to the new content.
Some email clients strip all but the first message below the signature of the new message being created as a reply. That pretty much demolishes the rest of the message thread. In the case of responding to a full message thread, that means only the original post would be included with the reply.
In this response (using Thunderbird), I highlighted the text I wanted to respond to before clicking *Reply List* and Thunderbird only included the highlighted text below this response. That puts the pertinent content right below my reply.
Best Regards,
Mike
Mike Starr, Writer Technical Writer - Online Help Developer - WordPress Websites Graphic Designer - Desktop Publisher - Custom Microsoft Word templates (262) 694-1028 - mike@writestarr.com - http://www.writestarr.com President - Working Writers of Wisconsin http://www.workingwriters.org/
On 4/2/2015 12:45 PM, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
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On 4/2/2015 2:18 PM, Mike Starr <mike@writestarr.com> wrote:
This would only happen if you blindly quoted the entire message.
Not ONE 'bottom poster' (inline is more correct term) would EVER suggest doing that, but I do know more than one top-poster who refuses to acknowledge this, and submits the same tired INVALID argument as a reason to support their laziness.
Been doing this for many, many years (ever since TB enabled the feature).
below this response. That puts the pertinent content right below my reply.
When it belongs above it...
But whatever, I stopped caring much a long, long time ago when I realized top-posters will never get it simply because they don't want to.
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That's what it seemed to me that J.B. was expressing... that the entire message thread would be repeated in each response.
However, "blindly quoting the entire message" is the default with many email tools (other than the few that scrub everything but the text immediately below the respondee's signature). Click *Reply* and that's what you get... and that would be the same whether you top-post or bottom-post. I try to be very conscious of it and trim whatever's not necessary but I sometimes forget as well.
I'll leave the discussion now... I've seen these top-post/bottom-post flame wars in the past. It's just like the toilet paper top/bottom argument. There is no *right way* to do it. It's all a matter of preference with good arguments on both sides.
Best Regards,
Mike
Mike Starr, Writer Technical Writer - Online Help Developer - WordPress Websites Graphic Designer - Desktop Publisher - Custom Microsoft Word templates (262) 694-1028 - mike@writestarr.com - http://www.writestarr.com President - Working Writers of Wisconsin http://www.workingwriters.org/
On 4/2/2015 2:57 PM, Tanstaafl wrote:
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The solutions is quite simple - use top-posting if you answering to the very whole message or thread (like this). It will save your time and would annoy nobody. (Don't forget to put your signature right after your answer to show others that there is nothing else below it from you to search for.)
Use inline posting if you want to answer to different parts of somebody's message separately.
Why keep using one scheme only?
Danil P.S. Never use bottom posting please... :)
2015-04-02 23:19 GMT+03:00 Mike Starr <mike@writestarr.com>:
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On 04/09/2015 12:25 AM, Danil Smirnov wrote:
Except those who receive digests or prefer to read the archives or actually need the quoted context to understand what you're talking about.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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On Thu, 4/9/15, Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> wrote:
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] I'd prefer clients had collapsing features, not top-post; do away with mailing list digests To: mailman-users@python.org Date: Thursday, April 9, 2015, 9:46 AM
On 04/09/2015 12:25 AM, Danil Smirnov wrote: this).
It will save your time and would annoy nobody.
Except those who receive digests or prefer to read the archives or actually need the quoted context to understand what you're talking about.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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I do not like top posting. With TP I have to read backwards through a conversation to understand what is going on. Makes no sense at all.
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Great example (below) of why I don't like bottom posting
Best Regards,
Mike
Mike Starr, Writer Technical Writer - Online Help Developer - WordPress Websites Graphic Designer - Desktop Publisher - Custom Microsoft Word templates (262) 694-1028 - mike@writestarr.com - http://www.writestarr.com President - Working Writers of Wisconsin http://www.workingwriters.org/
On 4/9/2015 9:49 AM, JB wrote:
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On 4/9/2015 8:07 AM, Mike Starr wrote:
Great example (below) of why I don't like bottom posting
I'd say it was a much better example of not trimming content and making it presentable; the quoted part could have been cut to 4-5 lines and preserved the context for reply. (And the list footer wasn't needed at all.)
z!
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On Thu, Apr 09, 2015 at 08:21:20AM -0700, Carl Zwanzig wrote:
I'd say it was a much better example of not trimming content and making it presentable;
Along with making one's MUA put signatures at the bottom…
-- "a difficulty for every solution" -- Samuel, on the Civil Service
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On 4/9/2015 11:21 AM, Carl Zwanzig <cpz@tuunq.com> wrote:
On 4/9/2015 8:07 AM, Mike Starr wrote:
Great example (below) of why I don't like bottom posting
Correct - this is what I meant when I said the vast majority of people who prefer bottom posting - and refer to it by that name - do NOT mean 'blindly quoting an entire message, signatures, footers and all, and adding their reply beneath it all'.
To promote such as a reasonable way to interact on mailing lists would be the height of absurdity.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b5ad28d303effad0915a48572b4b304c.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
And we can all say that our preferred method is the Platonic ideal of email replies but out there in the world, most users go with the default reply location set up in their email client (some of which default to top posting and some of which default to bottom posting) and if there's trimming being done, it's usually done by the email client (web or desktop), not the user. At least with top posting, I don't have to scroll through an entire digest to see the actual content of the reply. I got one like that today (a reply to a 15-message digest) and since I was already paying attention to the conversation there was no need for me to scroll whatsoever.
I'm promoting top-posting with trimming; you're promoting bottom posting with trimming. You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to. Neither one of us is right, neither one of us is wrong. We each have our preferences and if we each adhere to the approach we prefer, everything's fine. What we can't do is flog the uninformed users into obedience (oh how I wish we could). And tanstaafl, here's your free lunch... I put in an unnecessary CR/LF between paragraphs so you won't have an issue with reading my response <grin>.
Best Regards,
Mike
Mike Starr, Writer Technical Writer - Online Help Developer - WordPress Websites Graphic Designer - Desktop Publisher - Custom Microsoft Word templates (262) 694-1028 - mike@writestarr.com - http://www.writestarr.com President - Working Writers of Wisconsin http://www.workingwriters.org/
On 4/9/2015 3:13 PM, Tanstaafl wrote:
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/124f9bd3a2e84570d136e3d4be795943.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Mike Starr wrote:
Speaking of mail client behaviour, I noticed recently that if you select some text before hitting Reply, iOS's Mail app will only quote the selected material. It's a pity making the selection is so tedious (selection shortcuts only work in the reply, not in the original email), but they do seem to be trying to cater for people who don't simply quote everything.
Peter Shute
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0df724a41a9440aea36563edd8738763.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Thu, 9 Apr 2015, Mike Starr wrote:
I'm promoting top-posting with trimming; you're promoting bottom posting with trimming.
Well ,,, yes, trimming is really what is needed (and interleaving !) Quoting the entire message is annoying and wasteful of storage space and of one's attention !
Said that, bottom (or better interleaved if the message is long and has many subtopics unlike this one) posting is more legible, compare this one where I reply below the text and the example below the dashed line which is reversed.
Well ,,, yes, trimming is really what is needed (and interleaving !) Quoting the entire message is annoying and wasteful of storage space and of one's attention !
Said that, bottom (or better interleaved if the message is long and has many subtopics unlike this one) posting is more legible, compare this one where I reply ABOVE the text and the example ABOVE the dashed line which is "normal".
On Thu, 9 Apr 2015, Mike Starr wrote:
I'm promoting top-posting with trimming; you're promoting bottom posting with trimming.
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
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On Thu, 4/9/15, Mike Starr <mike@writestarr.com> wrote:
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] I'd prefer clients had collapsing features, not top-post; do away with mailing list digests To: mailman-users@python.org Date: Thursday, April 9, 2015, 11:07 AM
Great example (below) of why I don't like bottom posting
Best Regards,
Mike
Mike Starr, Writer Technical Writer - Online Help Developer - WordPress Websites Graphic Designer - Desktop Publisher - Custom Microsoft Word templates (262) 694-1028 - mike@writestarr.com - http://www.writestarr.com President - Working Writers of Wisconsin http://www.workingwriters.org/
On 4/9/2015 9:49 AM, JB wrote:
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/jebva%40yahoo.com
Why>? I followd the discussion perfectly until you to posted and broke the logic.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
JB...
It makes 10,000% more sense than doing what you just did (untrimmed bottom posting).
Your response only serves to provide massive ammunition for those arguing *against* bottom (inline/interleaved) posting.
Charles
On 4/9/2015 10:49 AM, JB <jebva@yahoo.com.dmarc.invalid> wrote:
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/41d2e799f59c73aa592340a3e979d649.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 4/9/2015 1:25 AM, Danil Smirnov wrote:
And your premise is wrong already. Top posting on an email list is highly annoying to anyone that prefers to read context in order instead of upside down. I, and MANY like me, read left to right and TOP TO BOTTOM... it's just one example of plain, old fashion, good email etiquette. I realize there are those that don't read that way but they aren't posting to an email list using the English language either.
Steve
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b273ab068bc220d17a3e4c710c401c4b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 4/9/2015 12:25 AM, Danil Smirnov wrote:
The solutions is quite simple - use top-posting if you answering to the very whole message or thread (like this).
Why keep using one scheme only?
P.S. Never use bottom posting please... :)
In order- You'd be amazed at what would annoy people.
Because I like it.
Sorry.
(As I've opined before, IME many people consider what we might call inline posting to be "bottom posting". I follow language that usage.)
It's not only about where you put the reply text, it's about how much of the original you retain. Users of one style are more apt to remove nothing from the original message while users of the other are apt to remove large chunks.
z!
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/682b7115267957111b90d648ac5ab780.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Thu, 09 Apr 2015 08:56:21 -0700 Carl Zwanzig <cpz@tuunq.com> wrote:
Hello Carl,
(As I've opined before, IME many people consider what we might call inline posting to be "bottom posting". I follow language that usage.)
More and more these days, on many mailing lists, I see *real* bottom posting(1); Several screens of quoted text below which is added a word or two of reply. It's got to the stage for me that, when I see emails, the first thing I check is the scroll bar. If that indicates more than two screens of text, I simply ignore it - it's rare indeed that, on a mailing list, an email worth reading is that long.
(1) Possibly as a result of people misusing the term when they really mean in-line or interpolated posting.
-- Regards _ / ) "The blindingly obvious is / _)rad never immediately apparent" Buy some love at the five and dime You Have Placed A Chill In My Heart - Eurythmics
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Carl Zwanzig writes:
(As I've opined before, IME many people consider what we might call inline posting to be "bottom posting". I follow language that usage.)
Uh, right, Yoda. May the Farce be with you!
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9f4d051b7fd662818891f95fe8c9e815.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Quoting Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org>:
But whatever, I stopped caring much a long, long time ago when I realized top-posters will never get it simply because they don't want to.
Yes, it's a hopeless battle.
The consensus on most technical lists I've seen is very strongly in
favor of bottom posting, with top-posters subject to flaming. But
outside that world, I find top-posting to be the norm. I agree with
the logic of bottom-posting, because it is--well--logical, but cannot
hope to prevail.
David Benfell <benfell@parts-unknown.org>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5615a372d9866f203a22b2c437527bbb.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Thu, Apr 02, 2015 at 08:09:12PM -0700, David Benfell wrote:
The consensus on most technical lists I've seen is very strongly in
favor of bottom posting,
Surely not. Bottom-posting is, if anything, worse than top-posting. With top-posting at least you get to see the reply[1] at the top of the post, and can delete it and move on with your life. With bottom- posting you have to scroll past seven pages of quoted text before you get to see their reply.
Perhaps you mean interleaved or inline posting, as I've done here?
[1] Often one line. On technical lists, that's often "Works for me." On non-technical lists, "Me too!".
-- Steve
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9f4d051b7fd662818891f95fe8c9e815.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Quoting Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info>:
I had not seen this term before. But it makes sense to me and is
indeed what I meant.
-- David Benfell <benfell@parts-unknown.org>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b273ab068bc220d17a3e4c710c401c4b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 4/3/2015 4:55 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
Perhaps you mean interleaved or inline posting, as I've done here?
To the vast majority of people that use the terms at all, "bottom-posting" and "in-line posting" are IME used interchangeably and for the same style.
(Is this an in-line or bottom post? Who cares? It's not top-post. Call it 'usenet' or 'interleaved' style if you want.)
z!
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5615a372d9866f203a22b2c437527bbb.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Fri, Apr 03, 2015 at 08:02:03AM -0700, Carl Zwanzig wrote:
I would love to see your survey results that show that.
I haven't done any surveys, but in my anecdotal experience, I can tell you that the regulars on a number of Python mailing lists are aware of the difference. I can probably even find a post from a beginner who admitted to deliberately adding his reply to the very end of the quoted text, without trimming, because he had been mislead by the term "bottom-posting". That's what he'd been told to do: post at the bottom, right? He was actually quite relieved to be told he was allowed to interleave question and answer.
Apparently there is, or at least was in 2011, a plugin for Apple's Mail.app which enabled bottom-posting. The quoted email is inserted in its entirety above the user's response.
The Wikipedia article on posting styles distinguishes between the three:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style
although of course interleaved/bottom posting are indistinguishable when there is only a single point being replied to.
In any case, regardless of whether it is an overwhelming majority who (mis)use the term "bottom-posting" for interleaved replies, or a vanishingly small minority, I believe that as we are (I hope) technically-minded people who consider precision in language important, making that distinction is important and I shall continue to do so.
-- Steve
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 4/3/2015 7:55 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> wrote:
Perhaps you mean interleaved or inline posting, as I've done here?
As I said earlier, this is what 99.999% of all people who say 'bottom-posting' mean, and to say otherwise is either just someone being pedantic, foolish, ignorant, or (more often imnsho) it is an outright trollish comment to make themselves feel better about being a lazy top-poster.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5615a372d9866f203a22b2c437527bbb.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Sat, Apr 04, 2015 at 11:26:34AM -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
Did you know that 99.999% of all people who say "99.999% of all people" are just plucking that number out of thin air?
And which am I? You can pick more than one if you like.
-- Steve
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 4/2/2015 1:45 PM, J.B. Nicholson-Owens <jbn@forestfield.org> wrote:
Well, liomited bandwidth was never a reason (in my mind) for wanting digest versions of some email lists...
The main reason I may choose a digest version of a list is if it is high-volume, and/or I am more of a lurker than participant. In such a case digests makes the Inbox (or folder if they are filtered to one) less cluttered.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b009b2809a98fc29d87d2ef8a9609005.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
I’d like it if digests could be either the full text of the emails or just a list of subject lines.
I don’t want to scroll through the full text of every message in the digest.
On 3 Apr 2015, at 6:06 am, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
On 4/2/2015 1:45 PM, J.B. Nicholson-Owens <jbn@forestfield.org> wrote:
Well, liomited bandwidth was never a reason (in my mind) for wanting digest versions of some email lists...
The main reason I may choose a digest version of a list is if it is high-volume, and/or I am more of a lurker than participant. In such a case digests makes the Inbox (or folder if they are filtered to one) less cluttered.
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/andrew.stuart%40superc...
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On 04/02/2015 12:13 PM, Andrew Stuart wrote:
I’d like it if digests could be either the full text of the emails or just a list of subject lines.
Mailman digests have a table of contents with just Subject: and From: name.
On some lists, where I'm only interested in very few topics, I subscribe to the MIME format digest. I read the TOC and often stop there and delete the digest. Some times I will go on and read a message or two of interest, and maybe open one individually and reply to it.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Please don't send direct to me, I'm on the list.
On 4/2/2015 3:13 PM, Andrew Stuart <andrew.stuart@supercoders.com.au> wrote:
I’d like it if digests could be either the full text of the emails or just a list of subject lines.
? Whats wrong with both? Every digest I've ever subscribed to has the list of email subjects at the top, then the content afterwards...
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9f4d051b7fd662818891f95fe8c9e815.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Quoting Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org>:
Agreed. I see some users choosing digest options even of relatively
low volume lists that I host. I myself use the digest option for
certain low priority lists that I want to get to, but not right away.
David Benfell <benfell@parts-unknown.org>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0df724a41a9440aea36563edd8738763.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Thu, 2 Apr 2015, Tanstaafl wrote:
On 4/2/2015 1:45 PM, J.B. Nicholson-Owens <jbn@forestfield.org> wrote:
I also think we should stop offering mailing list digests
Nobody forbids you as list administrator to stop offering digests on YOUR lists. But why would you like to forbid digests to administrators and users who appreciate it ?
I could not have said it better.
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
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Barry Warsaw writes:
This is an interesting question for me because I think the netiquette rules I've been using for decades may be changing.
http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/Teach/IntroSES/socsys.html
Yes-Virginia-economics-can-be-useful-ly y'rs,
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Barry Warsaw wrote:
I concur and I still consider this to be true on the grounds of legibility. I find it far more clear to read point followed by rebuttal instead of reading rebuttals followed by having to figure out which points were being rebutted.
I think users who prefer top-posting are mostly giving into their MUA's defaults. I don't think most users face MUA inability to edit quoted material. I find the users are also unwilling to put more time into editing, so they don't and now so many don't it is expected that Microsoft Outlook users (for example) will top-post.
Every modern (typically GUI) MUA I know of has a search feature, so I don't buy the notion that it's hard to sift through old emails. I do understand that it's hard to read poorly-reformatted quotes of old emails (a problem I see with top-posting replies) and I wouldn't trust quotes without going back to my copy of that email or a mailing list archive (if I don't have a copy of that post) to verify the quote.
I think modern MUAs in widespread use (with the exception of Thunderbird and its derivatives) don't do proper threading. Therefore many email users don't know what threading is from experience. Maybe some MUA will do threading and become popular and users will think threading is a new feature.
I also think it's right and proper to expect to pick up replies to mailing list posts on the list by default. I don't like having to include a header that tries to convey this desire to MUAs and I don't want another copy of any response sent to me in addition to a copy on the list. Unfortunately I don't know how to get Thunderbird to include the header on every mailing list reply without me having to tell it which addresses are mailing lists. I have a way I'd prefer Thunderbird to handle this but that would be off-topic for this discussion and mailing list.
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On Fri, 2015-03-20 at 22:39 -0500, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
I don't think a lot of designers of MUAs are willing to put more time into designing software that really meets the standards set by best practices for email in general, much less the requirements of list posting.
I find it quite distasteful to try to work around stupid software design. I'd far rather deal with software with predictable bugs than with software that treats me like an idiot, which is why I stick with Evolution for Linux.
Apple is the worst! Mac Mail is bad, and mail clients for iOS - iPhones and iPads - are worse.
So people are going to have to forgive me (or not) if I sometimes violate the rules of good netiquette. I cut other people a lot of slack in this regard.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On 2015-03-20, at 9:39 PM, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
Further to the point, between top posting and lack of editing, the digest format of list posts are essentially unreadable. Moreover, on more extended threads, entire digests can consist of a single post depending on how you set your size limits.
Although the ideal solution is obviously users changing their behaviour and or MUAs, I've wondered whether an "auto-trim" function within mailman would make sense (for digest users...)
Its been a thought provoking discussion btw, thanks to all.
al
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ee70e3f0a1a5abe130600f718438b9dc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Saturday 21 March 2015, Al Black wrote:
Yes! For every one, not just digest users. And it should default to removing all but one single level of quoted text (regardless of top or bottom posting) and be *user* setable to none removed or all quoted text removed.
Should also remove all quoted list banners and this should not be an easily changeable setting. Make them edit the source if they want to see seven list banners;-)
BTW, in my older version of KMail left clicking and *releasing* the 'Reply' button uses the default 'Reply' option. Left clicking and *holding* opens a dialog box with the following four options, Reply Reply to Author Reply to All Reply to Mailing-List
William
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On 3/21/2015 8:52 PM, William Bagwell wrote:
Settable by which user? The sender or the recipient?
And wouldn't a default of removing all but one level of quoted text make nonsense of some posts? E.g. in the passage above, one needs the inner quotation to know what the outer quotation refers to.
It seems to me correct editing of quotation sequences requires human thought, not just mechanical text manipulation. Even though some people expect their computers to think for them.
-- Larry Kuenning larry@qhpress.org
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I'd be happier if more clients at least allowed the option of using > to indicate quoting level, so it would be possible to edit them into a suitable format. And if html wasn't the default for so many clients.
When I try to manipulate an email full of quotes that are indicated by various methods including vertical lines down the left side and different coloured text, in an html editor that doesn't work properly, and which turns it all to mush if I convert to plain text because of line wrapping problems, it's easy to become discouraged.
Peter Shute
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/46f05b3d8ce25ad889788c9d34219727.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Sun, 2015-03-22 at 14:08 +1100, Peter Shute wrote:
For Linux users, Evolution has very intelligent handling of quotes. Not only are quotes indicated with ">" characters but reformatting a quoted paragraph preserves these in the right places. Copy and paste has a "Paste as quote" option which is very handy for consolidating quotes from several emails.
And if html wasn't the default for so many clients.
Don't get me started! To the best of my knowledge, there is no unified standard for HTML-ized email. Microsoft has "Rich Text", Apple has another standard. Digests can get mucked up beyond usability if people use HTML email and it's included in digests. Hopefully all HTMLized posts to a digested list are multipart/mixed with both a text/plain and a text/html part so the HTML can be nuked before its digested and/or sent out to subscribers. If not, all bets are off, but such emails are usually spam.
Nonetheless, IMHO HTMLized email the way of the future so we'd better get used to dealing with it.
Amen!
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/124f9bd3a2e84570d136e3d4be795943.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Lindsay Haisley wrote:
The default for MS Outlook seems to be HTML rather than Rich Text.
I've seen a plain text section that didn't match the html version (if I'm remembering that incident correctly).
Nonetheless, IMHO HTMLized email the way of the future so we'd better get used to dealing with it.
Yes, whether we like it or not. It's a pity though that such complex HTML is used. Do we really need anything more than the ability to bold and underline? I'd be happy with some of the basic Structured Text formatting commands, which have the advantage that they're still intelligible in plain text.
Peter Shute
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/de4632b78ba00436a9b77ed0d6ea8877.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 10:22:24AM +1100, Peter Shute wrote:
Do we really need anything more than the ability to bold and underline?
Butterick (and I agree entirely with him here) is against underlining:
http://practicaltypography.com/underlining.html
I'd be happy with some of the basic Structured Text formatting commands
Generally speaking, if I'm writing a long mail, I'll use Markdown. A few readers will stylize it; but as observed, it looks fine as is.
-- "all the succession and repetition of massed humanity ... Those vile bodies"
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Peter Shute writes:
I've seen a plain text section that didn't match the html version (if I'm remembering that incident correctly).
Indeed, occasionally you'll see the arrogant "your MUA doesn't deal with MIME properly" notice in a text/plain MIME part, rather than in the preamble.
You'd be amazed what teenage girls will do in an HTML email using a WYSIWYG editor. The point of the brain damage is like proprietary drivers in the Linux kernel: trying to provide features that the competition doesn't, in a non-standard way so that they can't just fix their editors.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/46f05b3d8ce25ad889788c9d34219727.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Wed, 2015-03-25 at 10:42 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
I've always admonished list owners for MM installations that I host at FMP to avoid HTML-ized email. It plays hell with digesting, and there's no single standard for interpreting it so that what the composer of an HTML-ized post may see in his/her WYSIWYG editor may or may not be what any particular recipient may see. It introduces an egregious amount of bloat into an email, and is a huge bandwidth suck when such an email is sent out via a list, not to mention that on a list a good fraction of recipients is pretty much guaranteed to not be able to see what the composer intended.
As the Internet has evolved, however, I've observed that there's a steady, unrelenting pressure toward enabling messaging of all sorts, including email, to handle a richer variety of content options - bolding, fonts, images, advanced formatting, etc. HTML appears to be the best markup standard for this and variations of it have been widely adopted for this purpose.
One of two things is eventually going to have to happen. Either people who design and publish standards for email are going to have to come to agreement on a proper standard for this kind of content enhancement, and people who design MUAs and email utilities such as mailing list managers are going to have to come to grips with these standards and implement them, or email as a form of communication will eventually go the way of Usenet, archie, gopher and other extinct (or nearly so) protocols and become an Internet relic along with all the spam that it makes possible. Email will be replaced for popular usage with such things as FB messaging and its descendants, and we'll see a movement away from public open standards toward proprietary protocols.
Email as a concept is extremely powerful, and how this plays out will be definitive in how the Internet itself evolves. Running a small online web hosting and ESP provision service, I've come to learn that when people's websites go down, they'll call and bitch about it and implore you to fix it ASAP, but if their email goes down they'll come looking for you with a rope. Human communication is vital, and full communication on the Internet must eventually involve a visual as well as a textural component, just as verbal face to face communication involves body language.
Teenage girls may indeed lead the way, just as we can learn what next year's high fashion in womens' wear will be by observing what hookers are wearing this year.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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Lindsay Haisley writes:
We have that, IMO. It's called HTML5 + <link rel=stylesheet ...>. Unfortunately, class and id attributes can easily be abused, but even so it's not hard to be disciplined if you want to be disciplined.
"Aye, there's the rub." They don't want to. It involves more thought and less monopoly power.
I'm not so pessimistic.
along with all the spam that it makes possible.
I'm not so optimistic. ;-)
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/19e21a1f005c894a5543a086c1076e60.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
At Wed, 25 Mar 2015 10:42:23 +0900 "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote:
Give almost *anyone* a big box of Crayolas, and you almost always get an instant 3 year old...
-- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services heller@deepsoft.com -- Webhosting Services
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On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 10:22:24AM +1100, Peter Shute wrote:
What Outlook, Hotmail etc. call "Rich Text" is in fact HTML, not to be confused with Microsoft's interchange Rich Text Format, RTF.
There is an "Enriched Text" standard for email, which supports basic formatting without the bulk and security implementations of HTML, but alas nobody uses it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_text
-- Steve
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On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 02:31:08PM +1100, Peter Shute wrote:
I understand that Outlook's Rich Text Format is actually the old win.dat format:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Neutral_Encapsulation_Format
Recent versions of Outlook apparently automatically convert "Rich Text" to HTML when you send to "an Internet recipient" (I assume that means a non-local user when using Exchange), which might explain why selecting Rich Text in Outlook appears to send HTML, and why win.dat attachments are now so rare. I don't think I've seen one in the wild for a decade or more.
https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Change-the-message-format-to-HTML-R...
If anyone cares enough to look for email sent from Outlook, you can probably determine for yourself what it is sending by inspecting the MIME type of the attachments, or looking at the raw content of the email. If you see lots of formatting commands inside angle brackets < ... > it's probably HTML, if they are inside braces { ... } (but they won't be ;-) it's probably the Microsoft RTF exchange format, and if you see a win.dat or winmail.dat attachment it will be "Outlook Rich Text".
-- Steve
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 3/24/2015 10:30 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> wrote:
What Outlook, Hotmail etc. call "Rich Text" is in fact HTML, not to be confused with Microsoft's interchange Rich Text Format, RTF.
And Outlook's 'HTML' is badly broken due to its reliance on the Word HTML rendering engine.
Why MS decided to change from IE to Word for the rendering engine is inexplicable - unless it was a bran-dead attempt to get people who just buy Outlook to buy the full Office suite (or at least Word too)...
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On Wed, 2015-03-25 at 08:49 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
The Word HTML generator has to be one of the worst WYSIWYG HTML code generators ever published. I've had to do manual repairs on the broken, bloated, ugly HTML which comes out of MS Word.
You can bet that the decision, coming from MS, was based on business considerations rather than any thought of technical merit.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On Saturday 21 March 2015, Larry Kuenning wrote:
Settable by which user? The sender or the recipient?
Recipient of course, sender has no way of knowing what the recipient prefers.
Not for us. Someone joining the conversation mid stream might but that is what archives are for.
I'm sure there would be occasionally maglings when some one starts a sentence with with an alternate quote character. Lindsay Haisley raises the valid point that HTML mail would be most difficult to include in such a filter.
Oh well, I can dream...
William
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/2b8b4785c960b044823e65d0fbe59d1b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
The email interface for our ticket system attempts to avoid these sorts of problems in comments by automatically stripping all quoted text. It undoubtedly could work better than it does (perhaps a more recent version does), and this situation is certainly different from a mailing list, but it has convinced me that any programmatic trimming of content is bound to cause problems for users.
Despite this, due to the preponderance of the very issues discussed in this thread, the feature is still useful and enabled.
--
Matthew Needham mneedham@hdfgroup.org 217-531-6110
The HDF Group 1800 South Oak Street, Suite 203 Champaign, IL 61820
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On Sat, 21 Mar 2015, Al Black wrote:
Further to the point, between top posting and lack of editing, the digest format of list posts are essentially unreadable.
Do you mean the MIME digests produced by mailman ? I totally disagree, they are one of the best features.
Subscribing in digest mode allows me to receive one cumulative post per day (about, unless there is more traffic) and deal with them not interrupting my other activities.
A proper MUA shall allow to read each message in the digest as if it were a single e-mail (and reply, archive, forward etc. etc.).
In the case of my MUA (Alpine) I've programmed it so that a single keystroke (for me it is capital D) will expand the digest in a temporary folder where I deal with individual messages.
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
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On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
But people don't have proper MUAs, or if they do, many don't know how to use them. So if you allow the digest version, somebody will respond to one of the messages in the digest version with a oneliner response which is top posted, followed by the quotation of the whole digest, and with a pointless Subject: (digest number) thrown in for good measure.
Thomas Gramstad thomas@ifi.uio.no
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On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 17:46 +0100, Thomas Gramstad wrote:
A proper MUA shall allow to read each message in the digest as if it were a single e-mail (and reply, archive, forward etc. etc.).
I know of exactly one that's "proper" in this regard. One of the reasons I keep Evolution as my primary MUA is because it allows me to extract a message/rfc822 part from a multipart/mixed MIME structure and save it _as an email_ in the mail folder of my choice, at which point I can deal with it as I wish.
T-bird doesn't do this, or didn't used to. Certainly Apple mail products don't even come close, nor do Microsoft MUAs. Does anyone know of any others that can do this? This ability is kind of my litmus test for an MUA.
I've found this quite useful in the past for emails identified as spam by SpamAssassin which are in fact not. I can pull them out of the wrapper that SpamAssassin puts around them and put them into my Inbox.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On 03/23/2015 10:55 AM, Lindsay Haisley wrote:
As far back as I can remember, T-bird does do this. It will display all messages in a multipart/digest inline, but also list them as 'attachments' which can be opened in a separate T-bird window and/or saved to a file.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 11:23 -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote:
T-bird comes close, but no cigar. I've tinkered with it to try to make it do what Thomas suggested was proper (with which I agree). T-bird treats a message/rfc822 attachment as it would a text/plain attachment. You can do whatever you wish with the attachment _except_ pull it into a mail folder as a valid email. I may be missing something, but as I say this is my litmus test for an MUA which treats me like a technically educated human, so I've poked at a number of different versions of it and never been able to make it behave this way.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, Lindsay Haisley wrote:
I didn't. You misattributed a previous post to me.
My suggestion is to turn off the digest option unless you'd start losing/not getting subscribers to a significant degree. (Which would typically occur for really high volume lists. Most lists aren't.)
Thomas Gramstad thomas@ifi.uio.no
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On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 20:06 +0100, Thomas Gramstad wrote:
I didn't. You misattributed a previous post to me.
I'm sorry, my bad. I got tangled up in the quote levels. Lucio Chiappetti said it.
A proper MUA shall allow to read each message in the digest as if it were a single e-mail (and reply, archive, forward etc. etc.).
My apology.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On 03/23/2015 11:34 AM, Lindsay Haisley wrote:
Correct. You can't just move it to one of your existing mail folders without machinations.
Interestingly, there is an undigestify add-on for T-bird <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/undigestify/>.
It will explode a digest into individual messages in the same folder, but it only works with RFC 1153 digests (Mailman's plain format). It doesn't work with MIME format digests.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/46f05b3d8ce25ad889788c9d34219727.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 12:20 -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote:
The nice thing about Evolution's capability in this regard is that it will work with _any_ multipart/mixed or equivalent package containing message/rfc822 parts. I use it, as I said, for pulling valid emails out of false-positive captures by SpamAssassin. This is kind of the equivalent of a browser knowing what to do with images or PDFs.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/46f05b3d8ce25ad889788c9d34219727.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 11:23 -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote:
I haven't dealt with MIME-format digests from MM for quite a while. I assume that these are functionally attachments with a MIME type of message/rfc822, yes? If not, then IMHO they should be. If they're not, then there's no help for it, and there's no MUA out there which will do what Thomas suggests and T-bird's behavior is as good as it gets.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 03/23/2015 11:44 AM, Lindsay Haisley wrote:
Yes. The MIME type of the digest part is multipart/digest. The individual messages are message/rfc822 sub-parts.
The overall message is multipart/mixed with maybe a text/plain part for digest_header, two text/plain parts for the boiler plate and the TOC, the multipart/digest part and maybe a text/plain part for digest_footer.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/46f05b3d8ce25ad889788c9d34219727.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 11:58 -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote:
Yes. The MIME type of the digest part is multipart/digest. The individual messages are message/rfc822 sub-parts.
So ideally, a "proper" MUA should be able to extract and deal with the message/rfc822 sub-parts as emails in their own right.
Pretty much what one would expect.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Lindsay Haisley writes:
Yes. Most Emacs-based MUAs (all the ones I've used, which is about 6), including even the horrible old RMail, can do this. Mutt and IIRC Alpine can too.
There's also an older format (RFC 974, I believe). The Emacs-based MUAs can folderize such digests, too, or "explode" them into individual messages and add them to a folder (usually just the current folder).
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0df724a41a9440aea36563edd8738763.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, Lindsay Haisley wrote:
Same behaviour I get with alpine (although not native, see below).
I tried T-bird only to help a friend to stay away from Microsoft MUAs, or ISP webmailers. I was deluded about it (for instance the way to handle the addressbook in alpine is far superior) but did not try MIME digest handling. I did not try Fossa-Mail (which stays to T-bird the same way Palemoon stays to Firefox). Did not try Mutt (of which I heard much good).
People here use either Alpine, or Kmail, or Squirrel web mailer or T-bird.
To be fair, the native handling of MIME digests in Alpine is far from elegant. You can View the index of the digest (as the index of attachments in any multipart message), and if you point to one of the message/rfc822 components in the (crowded) index and click, it will open it as an e-mail.
I overcame this using the capability of pine to program user keystrokes, and to feed messages in external scripts. So I point to the digest message, and type a capital D. That will spawn a one-liner script and then move to the folder contains the expanded digest.
The one-liner uses a procmail utility to split the digest into a folder: formail +1 -ds >! /poseidon/lucio/mail/temporary
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
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On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, Thomas Gramstad wrote:
On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
Subscribing in digest mode allows me to receive one cumulative post per day
which is something many people can appreciate (at least those who subscribe to mailing list, and then complain because they are interrupted in their work by too many new mails arriving)
Well, sorry, too bad for them ! :-)
So if you allow the digest version
Digest version is something the (knowledgeable) user enables in the personal setting.
I may agree it would not be a good idea for the list administrator to configure a list to send MIME digests *as default*, but it is good for users to be able to enable them.
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/8422201d58d3bce2ce4a259410f3f3c4.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Tue, 24 Mar 2015, Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
How can mail "interrupt"? Turn off noisy bells and whistles, sort list mail to their proper folders to be read at a suitable time, and exercise some work discipline! :)
Mail arrives all the time anyway, so people need to be able to deal with that.
As list owner / moderator I can decide to disable this setting, which is something many people appreciate, as it prevents hard to read comments on big "blobs" of text, and dysfunctional Subject: lines.
"Well, sorry, too bad for them !" :-)
Thomas Gramstad thomas@ifi.uio.no
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On 3/24/2015 8:59 AM, Thomas Gramstad wrote:
How can mail "interrupt"? [...] Mail arrives all the time anyway, so people need to be able to deal with that.
Exactly. Mail arrives when it does and I read it when I do. I really don't know why so many people feel compelled to check each message as it arrives.
I also don't generally understand most people's perceived need for digests*. IME they only work well when the list is well-moderated, which usually involved grouping topics and some editing (removing excessive quoting, for one). I'm on one list that does that and it works nicely, all the rest of my lists, and there must be 20-30, are individual messages. It works for me.
*also IME these people tend to think 20 total messages a day is a lot of email, and one digest email of 20 individual messages still only counts as one in their minds.
There's also a user-discipline issue of replying to mid-thread messages, but that's another rathole.
Laura- thanks for the discussion of the pre-quoting years.
z!
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Carl Zwanzig wrote:
Have you ever been in the situation where you're waiting for an important email which must be acted on quickly, and your mailbox is also suddenly receiving a flood of emails from a normally quiet list? It's so easy to miss the important emails, especially on a phone with it's tiny screen.
Many of us deal with this by creating a message rule that filters the unimportant list mail to a folder to be read at leisure. But many people don't know how to create message rules. When pop3 mail was common it wasn't possible to have the rules running server-side, so many users still don't even know it's possible. So they panic and either:
- unsubscribe
- reply to the list demanding that people stop talking about this off topic subject
- change to digest mode
Peter Shute
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0df724a41a9440aea36563edd8738763.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Wed, 25 Mar 2015, Peter Shute wrote:
Have you ever been in the situation where you're waiting ...
Many of us deal with this by creating a message rule that filters the unimportant list mail to a folder to be read at leisure.
I have procmail rules which filter particular e-mails to particular folders which I check once per day, but for the mailing list in normal operation I prefer to receive a (sort-of-daily) MIME digest in my main inbox.
I have two rules which divert mailing list posts to two folders when I am on holiday (so I can check the main inbox remotely with less messages): one of them is actually linked to /dev/null and is for what I call "secondary" lists, the other one collects the posts of the "primary" lists to be read when I return.
It is also possible (at least in mailman lists) to set one's own subscription to "nomail", but if one has many lists, it's too boring to do it (and reset it later) for each list, easier to filter collectively.
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
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On Tue, 24 Mar 2015, Thomas Gramstad wrote:
I am not saying I am one of those who are so annoyed when for instance one gets "me too" replies on an internal organization discussion list (or simply condolences for an obituary of a colleague) ... in which case I suggest them to use digest mode.
However mailing lists are usually a second priority to our main activity, be they discussion or technical support ones. So while it is good to reply asap to a person-to-person mail message, it is also good to wait to deal with mailing list messages. This is less distracting, allows to cool down discussions, to enforce the rule of one-post-per-day in the policy of some mailing lists etc. etc. ... so thanks to mailman authors for having it !
It is surely in your power and rights :-)
Usually the clueless which will reply to a digest are the same clueless who are unable to turn it on if it is off by default, and the same clueless unable to find a proper MUA and use it.
Or "pity for them" :-) ... the poor "knowledgeable users"
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/124f9bd3a2e84570d136e3d4be795943.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Thomas Gramstad wrote:
All this talk about digests and being able to extract the original emails prompted me to try setting one of my subscriptions to digest mode.
I had previously tried this and found that the resulting emails were presented to me in Outlook as one long email, and that replying to one of the contained emails involved editing out all the other emails, and adjusting the subject line. The reply behaviour of our list's digest members suggests they have to do the same thing (but often forget).
But this time I tried unticking the "Plain" option for my subscription. I was surprised to see that they did start coming through as individual attachements, and that I could open them and reply to them "properly". This works in both Outlook and iOS Mail.
But all I see is an index and a long list of unnamed attachments. If I want to read them, I have to open them one by one to see what's in them, or look at the index numbers and count through the attachements to find the right one. Is this normal? Perhaps this is something to do with convert_html_to_plaintext being set to On? We also have mime_is_default_digest set to Plain.
Peter Shute
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On 03/24/2015 02:03 PM, Peter Shute wrote:
But this time I tried unticking the "Plain" option for my subscription. I was surprised to see that they did start coming through as individual attachements, and that I could open them and reply to them "properly". This works in both Outlook and iOS Mail.
But all I see is an index and a long list of unnamed attachments. If I want to read them, I have to open them one by one to see what's in them, or look at the index numbers and count through the attachements to find the right one. Is this normal? Perhaps this is something to do with convert_html_to_plaintext being set to On? We also have mime_is_default_digest set to Plain.
"Outlook and iOS Mail". Both are notorius, non-compliant MUAs. There are lots of MUAs that will render a MIME digest in a useful way and still let you open and reply to individual messages. I don't know about iOS devices, and MUAs on mobile devices are a sorry lot, but reasonably recent versions of K9 Mail on Android will at least render a MIME format digest in a readable way.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 03/24/2015 02:53 PM, Peter Shute wrote:
So this is normal behaviour for these clients? I wouldn't see anything different if those settings I mentioned were different? I'm still pleasantly surprised that changing the Plain setting lets me access the digest as well as this.
No. This has nothing to do with convert_html_to_plaintext or any other content filtering settings, and mime_is_default_digest affects only the plain/MIME digest format choice for new subscribers. Once you are a list member, you (or the list admin) control your setting and the default is irrelevant.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Peter Shute writes:
Don't expect Microsoft and Apple MUAs to implement Internet standards sanely, because they don't. Those MUAs are equivalent to the large button cellphones designed for children and the elderly: very easy to for basic operations (and in the case of these MUAs, with lots of attention to "groupware" like calendars).
But people who use those MUAs are going to lose when presented with sophisticated or high-volume mail flows. If you have a lot of them on a list, disable digests. If they need digests, tell them to get a real MUA or shut up. We can't do anything about the design principles Apple and Microsoft use except deplore them (and we could be wrong -- look at the market valuations of those companies ;-).
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 03/23/2015 02:54 AM, Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
I think he's referring to the difficulty of reading (in particular) the plain format digest when it's full of top posted "me too" replies with quotes of quotes ...
Trying to find the original material amongst the quotes which you've already seen multiple times in the same digest is daunting to say the least.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/edcca44d385d597bda2fc9af28a5a18c.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Hey everyone,
On 2015-03-23, at 1:26 PM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
Thanks Mark, that's my point precisely. What I've heard from users is that the mime digests are better but it depends on their MUA(s).
I spent a few hours yesterday thinking about a "cleaner" to improve the signal noise for the kind of posts were talking about. Not a simple problem to solve (well for me anyway).
al
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 03/23/2015 04:06 PM, Al Black wrote:
I spent a few hours yesterday thinking about a "cleaner" to improve the signal noise for the kind of posts were talking about. Not a simple problem to solve (well for me anyway).
It's a very hard problem. You can see some of my attempts at this at <http://www.msapiro.net/scripts/MoreHolds.py>. A version of the rejectquote.txt template used by this script is at <http://www.msapiro.net/scripts/rejectquote.txt>
This handler is currently installed on my production site with the parameters as in the URL above, which in particular means RATIO is set to zero so no posts are held or rejected for excessive quoting. (The other holds are for no Subject:, digest Subject: or quoting of digest boilerplate.)
The calculation of quoted_count and unquoted_count and addition of same to the decoration-data is still done so that one can put something like
Experimental software on this Mailman installation thinks this post contained %(unquoted_count)s characters of new/original text and %(quoted_count)s characters of text quoted/included from prior list posts.
Into a list's msg_header (or footer) to try to educate people, but only one test list on my site has such.
For my first attempt at actually doing this in production, I think RATIO was set to 4 and REJECT_QUOTES was False (actually not implemented yet). The idea was I could hold some messages and edit them before bouncing them back to the list, and people might learn to do better.
I soon decided this was putting all the burden on me and users had little motivation to change, so I implemented REJECT_QUOTES and set it True.
The end result is at least some people wanted to top post and quote the entire message to which they were replying and they would go to extra trouble to edit the quoted material so I wouldn't recognize it as such or just paste in garbage to lower the ratio of quoted to unquoted. I.e. they spent more time and effort trying to bypass the rule than it would take to just do the right thing.
My main production list is the general discussion list for my cycling club. In the end, the club asked me to stop trying and I complied. A few people did learn and change their style, but some of those have since reverted.
Another interesting (to me at least) is the way in which convention and MUA design operates with relatively non-technical folks. I almost always reply to any email by interleaving my replies within whatever bits of quoted material I leave in the message as necessary to establish context. I've had friends say to me "I really like the way you reply to emails. How do you do that?"
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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On Fri, 20 Mar 2015, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
Every modern (typically GUI) MUA I know of has ...
I use a non-GUI MUA (Alpine) and I find it has all the features I can imagine to want (some of which were "user programmed")
I think modern MUAs in widespread use (with the exception of Thunderbird and its derivatives) don't do proper threading.
Alpine has threading, but I have not enabled it for e-mail (while I use it for Usenet newsgroups ... am I old enough ? :-)).
If I want to go back to a thread in a mailing list discussion (which I do not archive locally), I go to the list archive.
For personal (work) correspondence I need no threading. I archive message in separate folders by project/topic, and I can zoom in by subject.
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Barry Warsaw" <barry@list.org>
The traditional method for technical conversation mailing lists.
If the question has a 1 paragraph or less reply and won't engender a thread, then I can just barely tolerate top posting.
If the person replying is on a mobile MUA, where it's a bitch to deal with, I'll tolerate it.
Otherwise, I will take the time to clean up their reply, and hope that they catch on.
As for actually convincing the MUA to reply the right place, a shocking number don't understand RFC... 5369 headers, and the ones that don't rarely have "Reply to Recipient", which is a decent heuristic for most mailing lists.
So you have to reply all, and then the recipient gets the personal copy first, and replies to it off-list, and that way lies madness and sweaty palms...
Cheers, -- jra
Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274
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On 3/19/2015 2:19 PM, Andrew Stuart wrote:
It all depends, and is rife with arguments. Look on line for "top-posting/bottom-posting" and "reply-list/reply-sender" and you'll find many, ahem, strident arguments for each way.
For most lists, I press the "reply-list" button, delete the extraneous text, and enter my response (as I've done here).
At the very least, remove duplicated list footers, since each message will get a new one.
z!
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On Thu, 2015-03-19 at 14:56 -0700, Carl Zwanzig wrote:
In many mail user agents, when you press the "Reply" button the program will analyze the headers, determine that the post being replied to came from a list and offer a "Reply to List" option in addition to a simple reply, which generally goes privately to the original poster.
Andrew said:
It's pretty simple, actually. The list address goes into either the To or Cc field, and if you want others, not on the list to receive a copy, put them in the Cc field also, but don't go overboard because some systems will barf on "Too many recipients". Two or three additional recipients shouldn't be a problem. Addresses can be separated with commas, or with semicolons in the case of MS mail products such as Outlook.
It is polite, though, to make sure you're not sending duplicate posts to people by doing a "Reply to All" which will probably send a copy of your reply to _both_ the list and the original poster. I think that this is a common point of confusion. "All" in this context doesn't mean "all the list subscribers", but "all the addresses in the headers."
As far as editing, top posting, bottom posting, etc. it's just a matter of using good sense. All communication should get as much meaning into its context as possible, with as little "noise" as possible. So as Carl said, pull out extra footers and everything else that's not relevant to the immediate focus of the conversation. If you can read your own post, and it makes good sense and gets your point across, as concisely as possible, it doesn't matter what you cut or leave, or if you top post or bottom post.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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Lindsay Haisley wrote:
In all the mail clients I use, I get a choice of Reply, which for this list will reply only to the original sender, or Reply All, which sends it to the original sender and the list. If I want to reply just to the list, I have to hit Reply All and then delete the original sender's address. I usually don't bother, and I assumed most people don't. Has that been annoying people? I thought mailman was smart enough not to send another copy to people in the Cc list.
I think people are generally limited by whatever their mail client will support. Outlook likes to set you up for top posting. I've only managed to get my Outlook to generate the > quote indicators by telling it to open my mail in Plain Text format, and I edited the "Original Message" headers to the simple form above manually. I don't like to interquote in a section claiming to be "Original Message" because to me that implies it's been left intact.
When I had a Blackberry, I had no choice by to top quote. The quoted material is either there or not there on a Blackberry, it can't be edited. Now I have an iPhone, I can edit the message and the header is acceptable for interquoting.
We often see messages here that have replies alternating between top and bottom quoting, which can be very confusing, but often people have little choice.
I agree with the other reply that said people are tending towards top quoting more and more. Many people simply top quote as encouraged by their mail client, and haven't considered that there's any other way. Often people only read the reply above the start of the quoted material, and ignore interquoted material anyway!
Peter Shute
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On 03/19/2015 04:50 PM, Peter Shute wrote:
On Mailman lists at least it is a user option to receive or not receive two copies of list posts in which they are also directly addressed. Thus, I feel it is never necessary to remove the poster's address from a 'reply all'. In fact there is at least one good reason not to. Namely, the poster might be a digest member or even on some lists, a non-member, and 'reply all' gets them a copy now as opposed to in the next digest or never.
That said, I tend to use 'reply list' when it's available.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/8bd771fe9b0ed16c4aa1907b52bcaf65.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Hi Mark,
Our subscriber dynamic on our discussion lists is slightly different. While Mailman may eliminate the duplicate email sends to folks who have their messages replied to by readers, is important that we achieve two things with our list messages:
- We want all replies to go to the list, however, we do not want the sender’s email disclosed (this are medical discussion lists and we need to preserve some basic contact privacy)
- We DO want the sender’s name to be visible as part of the FROM since the senders may not include their name in the body of their message.
What we would like is: a) DMARC compliance and munging b) the From to read "sender via list name", i.e. “Dean Suhr - via Mailman-Users” for this list c) no matter if the user clicks REPLY or REPLY-ALL the reply goes only to the list
We want to be able to provide a controlled experience for all participants without having to change their personal behaviors. Prior to DMARC we were able to provide this capability (with sender name as from and all replies to the list) for our users.
I am struggling with v2.1.18-1 to establish this configuration. If this option combination is not available can you point me to where in the code I might have to manually tweak?
Thanks,
Dean
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On 03/31/2015 11:28 AM, Dean Suhr wrote:
OK
I don't understand how you were suppressing the sender's email address. Are you sure it wasn't there and just nut displayed by the email client you were using to read the mail. I.e. MS Outlook and several other mail clients, even K9 mail on my android phone, will by default only show the display name and not the address if there is a display name in From:
I am struggling with v2.1.18-1 to establish this configuration. If this option combination is not available can you point me to where in the code I might have to manually tweak?
If on General Options, you set
from_is_list = Munge From first_strip_reply_to = Yes reply_goes_to_list = This list
Also to prevent Privacy options... -> Sender filters -> dmarc_moderation_action from superceding from_is_list on posts from yahoo.com or aol.com, that setting should either be Accept or Munge From.
This will almost get you there, but the original From: address will be added to the Reply-To: header in delivered posts. This was changed in 2.1.19 to add the address to Cc: instead per <https://bugs.launchpad.net/mailman/+bug/1407098>, but it will be there in one of those headers so that reply-all will explicitly include the original From:.
To suppress this addition of the original From: to some header would require code modification or setting anonymous_list = Yes, but setting anonymous_list = Yes will completely hide the posters name.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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On Fri, 2015-03-20 at 10:50 +1100, Peter Shute wrote:
I'm kinda retro when comes to mail clients. My MUA of choice is Evolution for Linux. It's buggy, the source code is bloated, and there are some things it doesn't do well and probably never will. That having been said, it's the only MUA I know of that treats users as technically proficient adults - something I need as a mail administrator. See <http://www.fmp.com/living_with_evolution.html>
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Lindsay Haisley writes:
As far as editing, top posting, bottom posting, etc. it's just a matter of using good sense.
But there's one aspect of good sense you left out, namely "When in Rome...". This list strongly prefers interlinear posting (posting below the relevant paragraph) if you reply to more than one point at a time.
Other lists equally strongly prefer top-posting.
I don't know of anybody who prefers "bottom-posting" (and it's a bad idea to use that term as I've seen newbies instructed to "bottom-post" do exactly that, leaving 50 lines of original text and adding two lines at the bottom).
Which is used does matter, as (1) it's easier to find the new text if everybody does it the same and (2) I at least make far fewer "the post has no new content" errors with posts that follow the list convention than those that don't.
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On 3/20/2015 1:29 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote:
And I've seen many people use this exact example of 'bottom or inline posting' in support of their argument in favor of top-posting, ignoring arguments about trimming all irrelevant quoted text, implying that anyone and everyone who supports bottom/inline posting wants you to quote everything, untrimmed, and put your response below it.
It irks me no end...
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Sent from the Dehut/Haisley iPad email <household@fmp.com>
Which generally makes the best sense of all, to me at least. I do have one friend who finds this to be confusing, however.
I never quite understood all the fuss about top posting. The reason behind quoting in the first place is to provide context for a reply, but some MUAs make it very difficult to not top post.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Lindsay Haisley writes:
I never quite understood all the fuss about top posting.
Usenet over UUCP via 300 baud modems on backbone servers with 5MB disks.[1]
The reason behind quoting in the first place is to provide context for a reply, but some MUAs make it very difficult to not top post.
Friends don't let friends.... <wink />
Footnotes: [1] I think I'm exaggerating here, but not by more than two orders of magnitude. It really did matter then.
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On Sat, 21 Mar 2015 13:39:00 +0900 "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote:
Hello Stephen,
Usenet over UUCP via 300 baud modems on backbone servers with 5MB disks.[1]
Same went for FTNs, etc.
-- Regards _ / ) "The blindingly obvious is / _)rad never immediately apparent" I'd hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain Sweet Child O'Mine - Guns 'N' Roses
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Usenet over UUCP via 300 baud modems on backbone servers with 5MB disks.[1]
I adverse top-posting (and entire quoting of the whole replied message, or worst, thread) NOT because it is wasting bandwidth, NOT because it is wasting diskspace when archived ... but because it is disturbing to me to archive in each new message the entire content I already archived in the previous ones of the same thread.
Of course assuming we are talking of a serious correspondence worth being archived, not a chat.
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
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On Fri, 2015-03-20 at 10:07 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
I don't use T-bird much, but my version here (31.5.0 for Linux) presents a "Reply List" button when a list post is highlighted in the index.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On 03/20/2015 06:52 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
Actually, it doesn't work that way in any of the MUAs I know. But many offer a Reply List choice if the message has a List-Post: header. Thunderbird is one. Mutt offers an 'L' command to reply to the list.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 3/20/2015 10:03 AM, Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> wrote:
I'd really like to know which email user agents really do this.
Actually, it doesn't work that way in any of the MUAs I know.
Which was my point... ;)
Yep, use CTRL-SHIFT+L all the time on lists - but then get irritated when someone CC's me individually, because it never fails that it is the one sent directly that I end of trying to reply to, for which Reply-To-List doesn't work, so I have to delete it and try again on the duplicate from the list...
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On Fri, 2015-03-20 at 09:52 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
My MUA of choice is Evolution, formerly from Ximian but now a gnome GPL project. It has this feature, as does Thunderbird, which is fairly popular. I was under the impression that Outlook and/or Outlook Express had it too, but I'm not sure about this.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On 3/20/2015 10:27 AM, Lindsay Haisley <fmouse@fmp.com> wrote:
Ummm... this is not what you said initially.
You said "In many mail user agents, when you press the "Reply" button the program will analyze the headers, determine that the post being replied to came from a list and offer a "Reply to List" option..."
The 'Reply-To-List' button in Thunderbird is a completely separate button. Also, when you click the normal 'Reply' button, it simply replies, it doesn't 'analyze any headers' or present you with any other options or choices... same for every other MUA I know of.
So, it sounds like you just sortof misspoke... ;)
Admittedly - the 'Smart Reply' button in Thunderbird *does* actually actively change behavior depending on whether or not the message has list headers (and also whether or not there are multiple recipients), but as I said, I don't get to use it much since I can't put it on the main toolbar (I do have a bug open for this)...
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On Fri, 2015-03-20 at 10:49 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
This is the way Evolution works.
In T-bird there's a pane with message headers and action buttons below the index and above the preview pane. If a list message is highlighted in the index, there's a "Reply List" button presented right next to the "Reply" button. If a post isn't a list post, this button is absent. This is even simpler than what Evolution does.
If T-bird and Evolution are NOT looking at headers and offering an appropriate list reply option, then how are they determining when to display this button, and when not to?
I think is the "out of the box" behavior of T-bird for Linux, but I may be misspoken on this ;)
So, it sounds like you just sortof misspoke... ;)
Only superficially. The point is that both of these MUAs are list-aware and offer options appropriately.
I don't get to use it much since I can't put it on the main toolbar (I do have a bug open for this)...
I don't use T-bird much at all, except as a MUA to distribute FMP's monthly invoices and statements, and it has issues which make it problematic for this purpose unless one is careful.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On 3/20/2015 11:09 AM, Lindsay Haisley <fmouse@fmp.com> wrote:
This is the way Evolution works.
Ok, but my point is, one MUA with a tiny user base is very far from 'many mail user agents'. So, again - looks like you mis-spoke. Not a crime, I do it sometimes, but it is annoying when someone argues nits just to avoid simply acknowledging a mistake.
The Reply List button is only there if you put it there, unless recent updates have started putting it there by default (it never was before).
Again, my point is this doesn't happen *when you click the REPLY button* this context) initiated some kind of testing of the headers to try to
- you said (not implied, not hinted, you said it outright) that clicking 'the Reply button' (only the 'normal' Reply button can be inferred in
guess what kind of Reply would be most appropriate.
Are you saying that this is indeed what Evolution does? It only has one 'Reply' button that is similar to Thunderbird 'Smart Reply' button?
Only superficially. The point is that both of these MUAs are list-aware and offer options appropriately.
No, the point is you apparently can't simply acknowledge that you mis-spoke/made a mistake.
And in Thunderbird, nothing is 'offered' unless you take some kind of affirmative action (like adding the 'Reply List' button to the toolbar and understanding how it works), then, the only thing that happens is the Reply List button is either available or not, depending on the List headers (and it doesn't work with all lists either)...
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/46f05b3d8ce25ad889788c9d34219727.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Fri, 2015-03-20 at 14:37 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
Tanstaafl, it it will make you happy, I _officially_ acknowledge that I made a mistake/mis-spoke, and I apologize to you, and to anyone else who was confused or annoyed by what I said!
I still think you pretty much missed my point.
Can we move on now?
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 3/20/2015 2:48 PM, Lindsay Haisley <fmouse@fmp.com> wrote:
We could have moved on 3 posts ago had you simply said 'oops, yeah, I misspoke, here's what I meant', instead of trying to justify it somehow.
I even included a winkie in my first comment pointing out you probably mis-spoke - which, when combined with the rest of the content of my posts, shows conclusively that I did indeed 'get your point'.
And now you compound the problem by making a grand-standing apology obviously meant tongue-in-cheek, in that you don't really mean it, but instead are trying to deflect blame for this ridiculous side-thread back on me.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/46f05b3d8ce25ad889788c9d34219727.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Sun, 2015-03-22 at 11:52 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
Again, I apologize to you, Tanstaafl, and anyone else who found my over-broad assertion off-putting or inappropriate. So, oops, yeah, I misspoke. And my first apology was completely sincere.
I'm making a conscious effort to not make broad assertions and generalizations without providing at least _some_ evidence in support of what I say.
If anyone else wishes to personally take me to task over this, PLEASE do so in personal email. I'll be happy, as always, to field technical critiques on list of _any_ assertions I make, broad or narrow, as I'm sure well everyone else on this list.
Subject closed! Now back to our regularly scheduled program :)
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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Richard Damon writes:
I don't understand why they do it this way. If I were writing an MUA, I'd make each addressee a button which replies to them only.[1] For the explicit reply button, I'd automatically put the list-post and author in To:, provide an obvious delete button on each (as Gmail does), and provide an "add other addressees" button in Cc:.
As it happens, on XEmacs lists about half the people who are most likely to end up in "reply-all" cc lists *want* to be cc'd because their filters put general list traffic in a folder they read much less frequently, but replies to their own posts they want to read immediately, so I've never coded it.
It's a very difficult UI/UX problem, I think.
Footnotes: [1] The alternative use for active regions over an addressee would be to provide contact list information, but I would do that in a tooltip.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 3/21/2015 12:55 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote:
Way too complicated for me...
I like the 'Smart Reply' button in Thunderbird (just wish I could put it on the main toolbar), but I'd make its behavior configurable:
a) Allow the user to set a global default (ie, if List headers are present, set default to 'Reply To List'), then make this over-ridable somehow on a sender basis (ie, for certain lists, you could change the default to the normal 'Reply' (to sender only)), or
b) allow the user to have it automatically show all relevant reply options simultaneously (ie, side by side, without a drop-down selector), ie: If List headers are available, show 'Reply' and 'Reply To List' buttons, if List headers are available and there are multiple recipients, show all three ('Reply', 'Reply All', and 'Reply To List')
Getting the config options and UI right for this would take a little thought, but I think it would be doable...
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 3/20/2015 8:38 PM, Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> wrote:
Do you mean that you see a single button with a drop-down that provides these three choices?
If so, then you are using the 'Smart Reply' button that I described earlier, that
a) is only available on the preview pane header toolbar, and
b) has to be manually placed there (unless it is now placed there by default automatically, which it wasn't when it was first introduced).
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/46f05b3d8ce25ad889788c9d34219727.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Sun, 2015-03-22 at 11:32 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
As of T-bird 31.4.0 for Ubuntu Linux 12.04 the _default_ behavior is to present a "Reply List" button with a drop-down appendage when the index cursor is located on a list post. The when this tab is clicked, a drop-down drop-down menu is attched to this button presents the above listed options. I determined this empirically by deleting T-bird and my user config for it on one of my VMs and reinstalling it from scratch.
Nowhere in the visible UI is "Smart Reply" mentioned, nor is it listed in the preferences menu. This may be a default of the installation rather than of of T-bird itself.
a) is only available on the preview pane header toolbar, and
Yes, this is where it's located.
If I right-click on the preview pane itself (which is separate from the header/button pane) I get a pop-up menu with "Reply to List" on it, regardless of whether or not a post is a list post. If I click on this option for a non-list post I get a reply/composition window with the To address empty. For a list post, this is filled in with the list address by T-bird.
b) has to be manually placed there (unless it is now placed there by default automatically, which it wasn't when it was first introduced).
The "Reply List" button is apparently there by default when a list post is selected. T-bird 31.4.0 is doubtless not the latest version, since the Linux distributions on my VMs is a few years old, so the behavior may have changed since then.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On 3/22/2015 12:14 PM, Lindsay Haisley <fmouse@fmp.com> wrote:
If you get into customize mode for that toolbar (right-click on it, customize), you'll see the name of the button is 'Smart Reply'...
But yeah, it looks like it is placed there by default now.
Now, I just wish the button was made available to the main toolbars too.
A couple of years ago, I had opened a bug requesting a new button with the exact same name, then a few months after I opened that bug, I found the one in the message header toolbar (not sure when it was introduced). I then changed my bug to request that the button be available to all toolbars, but it didn't go anywhere. The problem was something about the button icon size changing (it is the last comment)...
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On Fri, 20 Mar 2015 09:52:19 -0400 Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
Hello Tanstaafl,
Claws-Mail has the option(1) to "reply to list" when the relevant headers are present. Also, mailing list folders can be set up so spurious To's and Cc's are avoided.
(1) Can be (un)set by the user. Most set it to on because, well, why wouldn't you?
-- Regards _ / ) "The blindingly obvious is / _)rad never immediately apparent" Bet you think you're king but you're really a pawn When You're Young - The Jam
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On 3/20/15 8:52 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
Thunderbird. ('Reply to list' for listservs, 'Reply all' if more than one recipient in a non-list conversation)
Others like Gmail will offer 'reply all' if there's more than one recipient.
And what you get when you hit 'reply' will depend on what the list sets as the reply-to address. In Mailman we have the option of setting it to the list address OR the sender. Some of mine go to sender (typically lists whose participants tend to go far off topic frequently), some go to the list.
A couple of quick rules of thumb I use for responses: If I can answer an original question definitively in one or two lines and it's not likely to spark a long thread, I will top post.
Otherwise, I most often use the trim-and-interleave, or if it makes sense (as in this post), bottom posting. In general, follow the convention most used in the list or conversation in question.
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Lindsay Haisley" <fmouse@fmp.com>
{{citation-needed}}
Thunderbird, Mutt, Zimbra, Outlook and Outlook Express (and descendents) all don't do that. What are "many MUAs"?
Cheers, -- jra
Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274
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T-bird _does_ do this, although it doesn't work exactly as I described. the header/button pane between the index pane and the preview pane contains a "Reply List" button if a list post is is highlighted in the index, otherwise said button is absent. Someone in this discussion said that this isn't default behavior in T-bird, but I can't speak to this. The point is that T-bird is list-aware and can offer reply choices accordingly. So can Evolution, which was the default Gnome MUA until a few years ago. Barry Warsaw told us that Claws Mail has excellent reply-to-list support, and Mark Sapiro said that Mutt offers an "L" command to reply to a list.
Whether (count them!) four MUAs constitute "many MUAs", and whether I'm culpable for a misrepresentation of the facts is a matter of opinion. I already ate a large serving of crow in response to Tanstaafl's taking me to task on the same matter. At the moment I'm not hungry.
The point is that programming list-awareness into an MUA isn't rocket science, and the fact that it's not done in many of them is more a matter of UI designers and their buddies in marketing departments deciding to "simplify" (i.e. dumb down) their MUA products to enhance user experience and avoid confusing and possibly educating their user/customer base.
Sent from the Dehut/Haisley iPad email <household@fmp.com>
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On Fri, 20 Mar 2015, Andrew Stuart wrote:
When I reply to a message on a mailing list, what is the ???right??? way to do it?
Not sure if there is a right way for everybody. Definitely there is a way I like it to happen and ways which I find extremely annoying.
Should I be deleting previous thread text from my response?
For me, yes please do.
Should I be adding anything in?
Your contribution, unless it is "me too" :-)
Talking seriously. I think there are two separate matters. Knowledgeable users may "program" their MUA (or Mail Delivery Agent) to follow their preferences almost in any case. It is more difficult for a list administrator or a poster to force all correspondents to follow a given policy.
One matter is : to whom shall the reply go ?
Here the list administrator has the power to set a preference for the list (reply goes to poster, reply goes to list or eventually even redirect the reply or block it ... the same can occur for a single circular mail with appropriate header tweaking), and the user with a proper MUA should have the capability to reset the preference to what he likes.
In most cases lists are DISCUSSION lists, so in this case MY preference is that the reply shall go to the list ONLY and not ALSO to the poster, Clever list managers properly configured will avoid sending duplicate replyes if sent to the list and to one list member.
I am annoyed when this does not work and I receive two copies, but I just check the message id and remove one redundant copy.
If the list is not configured for reply to list, if it is a list I use rarely I just do Reply All, this will compose the header to send to poster and list, and I remove the poster address.
(and of course there are case in which I WANT to respond privately so I remove the list address)
For lists I use regularly I have configured my Alpine MUA to use a role which replies just to the list.
There are cases of lists for which a reply to the list is unwanted. I remember a technical list on which replies to the posts (which were sort of help requests) were FORBIDDEN, Replies went to the OP, which had the commitment at the end to post a summary. It worked quite nicely because members were disciplined people.
Other cases when a reply is unwanted are circular messages, like conference announcements. This applies also to messages sent to a distribution list (not an exploder). Proper usage of headers like Bcc: or better Lcc: (supported by Alpine) and Reply-To should automatize the fact replies go only to the poster.
The other matter is : top posting, bottom posting, no quoting, trimmed quoting
Here I definitely hate top posting, but I am also annoyed by the fact that people quote entire messages, and so by the fact I will save to a folder many copies of redundant text I already had in the previous message.
In this case I have instructed my mail delivery agent (procmail) to filter out the unwanted stuff (since I could not educate my correspondents) http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/Procmail/noquotenohtml.html
So my preference is to either reply with my contribution, or trim the original text to the parts I want to reply, and interleave my answers. This very message is an example
(to do multiply interleaving, i.e. reply to more posters, I have to pass via an external clipboard)
On Thu, 19 Mar 2015, Mark Sapiro wrote:
I do agree that sending copy of a full correspondence is rarely a case for a mailing list, unless perhaps one wants to inform a new subscriber of past correspondence
If the mailing list supports archiving, the easiest way to do it is to refer the new subscriber to the archives.
If one wants instead to inform a new team member of past correspondence exchanged with other recipients outside of a mailing list, a nice way is to forward him a MIME digest of all past messages (with Alpine one can easily select a block of messages and Apply Forward ... one can also unpack a digest into a folder, but that's more tricky)
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
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On Mar 20, 2015, at 08:19 AM, Andrew Stuart wrote:
Of course, Wikipedia is the font of all human knowledge and truth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post
This is an interesting question for me because I think the netiquette rules I've been using for decades may be changing.
I've always found it proper and useful to include the quoted material of the original message, but trim the quotes to just the bit you are responding to. I'd call this interleaved-with-trimming.
Top posting has always been a serious breach of netiquette.
What I've found interesting is that some of my correspondents (off-list) actually *want* top posting, and find anything else confusing. I think I understand why in at least some cases; Apple Mail top posts by default, and some folks just don't like to go digging around in the email to find the answer they're looking for. I've actually tried to accommodate that when sending email to them.
I see more and more mailing list and group emails not doing any trimming. I find that incredibly hard to parse because if they *are* interleaving responses, you have to hunt through a huge amount of text. To make things worse, almost the entire conversation is retained so responses to responses to responses just clutter things up and make more noise. I wonder if webmail u/is like gmail (which I don't use) encourage this style.
And don't get me started on HTML-only email or some reply styles that make no distinction between the quoted original text and the reply. I can barely read those.
As the article mentions, there are enough different styles in widespread use that it's best to conform to the norms of the community. My own feeling is that interleaved-with-trimming is the most conducive to mailing list discussions.
Cheers, -Barry
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I was thinking that people new to using Mailman could get a very simple email “welcome to this list” on subscription, with brief pointers on how to do things. To the uninitiated there might be a sense of not wanting to engage for fear of breaking something or doing it wrong.
I’m certain that the vast majority of less technical users don’t know how conversation threads work.
For example I’m still not really clear on which field the list address should go into, and does it matter what other addresses go into to and cc fields. I suspect it doesn’t matter much but I haven’t yet gone to the trouble of working it out (hey that’s what I’m doing now!).
as
On 20 Mar 2015, at 8:53 am, Barry Warsaw <barry@list.org> wrote:
On Mar 20, 2015, at 08:19 AM, Andrew Stuart wrote:
Of course, Wikipedia is the font of all human knowledge and truth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_post
This is an interesting question for me because I think the netiquette rules I've been using for decades may be changing.
I've always found it proper and useful to include the quoted material of the original message, but trim the quotes to just the bit you are responding to. I'd call this interleaved-with-trimming.
Top posting has always been a serious breach of netiquette.
What I've found interesting is that some of my correspondents (off-list) actually *want* top posting, and find anything else confusing. I think I understand why in at least some cases; Apple Mail top posts by default, and some folks just don't like to go digging around in the email to find the answer they're looking for. I've actually tried to accommodate that when sending email to them.
I see more and more mailing list and group emails not doing any trimming. I find that incredibly hard to parse because if they *are* interleaving responses, you have to hunt through a huge amount of text. To make things worse, almost the entire conversation is retained so responses to responses to responses just clutter things up and make more noise. I wonder if webmail u/is like gmail (which I don't use) encourage this style.
And don't get me started on HTML-only email or some reply styles that make no distinction between the quoted original text and the reply. I can barely read those.
As the article mentions, there are enough different styles in widespread use that it's best to conform to the norms of the community. My own feeling is that interleaved-with-trimming is the most conducive to mailing list discussions.
Cheers, -Barry
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Andrew Stuart writes:
For example I’m still not really clear on which field the list address should go into,
To or CC. Most Mailman lists will refuse to accept mail BCC'd to the list.
and does it matter what other addresses go into to and cc fields.
It doesn't matter for mechanical purposes. To, CC, and BCC are all routed the same way (using RCPT TO aka "envelope recipient" at the SMTP level), and To and CC are handled the same way by almost all receiving MUAs (BCC is, of course, as invisible to the receiving MUA as it is to the human).
So To is your target, and CC is the innocent bystander, and BCC are the sniggerers in the peanut gallery, as always.
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On 03/19/2015 10:39 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
There is one case with Mailman lists where it matters, at least in MM 2.1, but I think MM 3 too.
If a list member has 'avoid dups' set and that member is a Cc: addressee of a post, that member will not receive the post from the list AND that member's address will be removed from the Cc: list of the post delivered to the other list members. This is not the case if the member is a To: adressee; the member's list copy is still suppressed by 'avoid dups', but her addresds is not removed from the To: of the post from the list.
The removal is to prevent Cc: lists from growing too large in threads with many participants.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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Mark Sapiro writes:
Does this actually work? In practice, I get the feeling that a large minority at least unsets "nodupes". XEmacs lists default to nodupes, but about 1/3 of users have them unset, and a quick eyeball suggests that over 95% of the ones with nodupes set have never posted or been cc'd on the list.
I would say that the effect that such members get many fewer automatic CCs from reply-all would be the main reason for the removal. Even if it doesn't work this is the right thing to do.
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On Sat, 21 Mar 2015 13:35:52 +0900 "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote:
Hello Stephen,
Does this actually work? In practice, I get the feeling that a large minority at least unsets "nodupes". XEmacs lists default to nodupes,
I always turn NoDupes off. The reason being that I *want* the list copy, but *not* the personal copy of the email(1). IOW, the complete opposite of what NoDupes does. Obviously, there is no way that MailMan can achieve this.
(1) The personal copy often fails to get filtered to the relevant folder because of missing headers, change in Subject line, etc.
-- Regards _ / ) "The blindingly obvious is / _)rad never immediately apparent" People stare like they've seen a ghost Titanic (My Over) Reaction - 999
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On 03/19/2015 02:53 PM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
+1
Although, I have fought and lost the battles with my cycling club list members.
On our main discussion list, digests are virtually unreadable at times because it is nearly impossible to find the original material in the multiple quotes of quotes of quotes, and similarly for archives.
And some people on the list continue to insist that they like top posting with full quoting because they only have to read the latest post in a thread (albeit from the bottom up), even though it's been pointed out to them multiple times that threads are trees and even if everyone quotes everything, any particular leaf only contains the posts on that branch.
Top posting with full quoting is also encouraged by MUAs like Gmail's web client that hide the quoted material unless you ask for it.
I do understand that in some business situations (contract negotiations, attorney/client communication and the like), it is useful and pretty much demanded that each message contain the full transcript of what went before, but this has no place on an email discussion list.
This is a major hot-button issue for me, The above is only scratching the surface.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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Seems like there are various approaches and opinions.
Is it practical to come up with a very short list of instructions for non-highly-technical end users to give them so hints and confidence to get started using a list?
Thinking a clerk in the accounts department at large-corporation-X has been subscribed to the list annualreport@list.bigcorp.example.com
How can we support them in rapidly becoming confident enough to post and use the list?
as
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Andrew Stuart wrote:
Maybe you could put some examples on a web page of what you consider to be desirable quoting practices, in the hope that new users might take up those practices and encourage older users to conform. But if they're using the same email client they use for their other day to day email, they'll most likely just do what they've always done. And it's one thing to berate users of some obsure special interest mailing list for their quoting practices, it's another thing if it's your boss.
I think the best you can usually hope for is that some of them will trim the quotes occasionally. In the end, unless the discussion gets very complicated, it usually doesn't really matter as far as people being able to understand messages is concerned. Lots of repeated quoting can make messages big though.
Peter Shute
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On Thu, 2015-03-19 at 17:45 -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote:
Top posting with full quoting is also encouraged by MUAs like Gmail's web client that hide the quoted material unless you ask for it.
It's also encouraged by iDevices with iOS using mail clients which insert the quoted material _below_ the user's sig. Converting to bottom posted isn't really trivial and involves a bit of cutting and pasting.
This is one of the reasons I've long ago abdicated my job as list moderator for _all_ the lists I host and to which I also belong. I'm happy to be the technical admin, and deal with problems with spam and the occasional technically disruptive member or ex-member, but I don't want to get into the day-to-day decisions about what's allowed or not on a list.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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At 07:45 PM 3/19/2015, Mark Sapiro wrote:
Everyone should remember that your needs are not necessarily the same as others. I run some 250 lists that primarily cater to blind persons, and top posting is the norm. While we can sort it all out, despite quoting style, top posting is the easiest in most situations. There is no one right, or wrong way.
David Andrews and long white cane Harry.
E-Mail: dandrews@visi.com or david.andrews@nfbnet.org
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On 3/19/2015 6:59 PM, David Andrews wrote:
And for those lists, it's accepted practice because it works for them. Most of the lists I'm on highly discourage top-posting, which works well for their readers. (I observe that the message I'm replying to was entire bottom-posted.)
While we can sort it all out, despite quoting style, top posting is the easiest in most situations.
Not sure what you mean about quoting there as top-posting pretty much dictates the quoting style- everything from previous messages is below the new material; it's simply a matter of how much you remove. So even based solely on the comments on this list, I think you'll find that top-posting is not "the easiest". Well, maybe "easiest" ("laziest"?) in the sense of effort, but not "best" or "most useful" or "easiest to follow".
And for forestall the arguments about not trimming messages- sure, memory is cheaper now, comm lines are faster, drives are bigger, most people use GUI mail readers, but that's no reason to cart around sometimes thousands of no-longer-relevant verbiage. Especially when adding a two-line comment...
Anyway, YMMV, mine does.
z!
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If you're referring to the problem of getting the selection boundaries in exactly the right spot, I'm well familiar with that. So easy to get them within one or two characters, but requires excessive concentration and effort to get them closer. Don't know why they don't add cursor keys to help with it.
Peter Shute
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On Mar 20, 2015, at 03:23 AM, Peter Shute <pshute@nuw.org.au> wrote:
If you're referring to the problem of getting the selection boundaries in exactly the right spot, I'm well familiar with that. So easy to get them within one or two characters, but requires excessive concentration and effort to get them closer. Don't know why they don't add cursor keys to help with it.
NextApp Keyboard does have arrow keys, as well as a key to switch from cursor movement to selection movement and other useful things missing from most soft keyboards. It's not nearly as easy as with a real keyboard, but it does at least provide the functionality.
--
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jdd writes:
This is true.
On many lists I frequent, people have changed their .sig in their smartphone to "Sent from my <smartphone>, very sorry about the rude quoting." :-) But the people I respect (eg, Guido van Rossum) often write the apology explicitly in a large minority of their smartphone posts when they fail to trim.
OTOH, I ditched AppleMail for the Gmail app very quickly. That makes it very easy to nuke the quotes (just delete the ellipsis). I write one sentence to summarize the point I'm replying to and then what I have to say. (I don't do list mail from my smartphone much, though.)
I think the best solution for most replies (unless you're in Guido's position of leadership) is to bite the bullet and wait until you're at a terminal to post.
Steve
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On Don, 2015-03-19 at 17:45 -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote: [...]
also +1 for the "quote only relevant and answer inline directly below it" style - an email is written once and read (hopefully;-) more often so it is actually extremely unfriendly (because time killing) to all others to make a mail not as simple and easy readable as possible to save everybody's time (otherwise people might not even read the mail past line 2 and after a few of this mails, one might remember the "\seen" - if not worse - flag in the sieve script).
They seem to read only a few mails a day and the contents must be quite simple. Otherwise one - at least me - really needs to know the context and which aspect of the quoted/original mail is actually meant/answered.
The various Outlooks have the same design fault - especially as it's the default behaviour.
Well, I store such possibly important mails (ans MLs usually have archives somewhere) so full-quoting everything on every mail is pretty pointless (and in some "commercial" situations one would archive every mail automatically anyways ...).
And most people make no difference on the situations and/or circumstances (like in "I always sent mail in this way so it must be correct!").
In lots of proprietary/hidden "environments" people actually do not think about the information flow and solve lots of problems (not all!) with MLs but just sent mail to (presumed) involved people. And if a new one is included, one - or more all of them - have the excuse to have always full-quoted/top-posted everything. The real fun starts if such mails leave the company and the outside gets knowledge on who is really involved on the other side and factual internal details ....
Kind regards, Bernd
"I dislike type abstraction if it has no real reason. And saving on typing is not a good reason - if your typing speed is the main issue when you're coding, you're doing something seriously wrong." - Linus Torvalds
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On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 05:45:58PM -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote:
I don't think it is useful. It might be demanded, but that's just because it's the convention, not because it's useful. If it were useful to include a full transcript of everything that went on prior in each and every message, lawyers would do so with paper correspondence (and charge the client for photocopying). But they don't.
I've been through a number of (thankfully minor) legal actions, and going through conventional top-posted emails is *painful*. It makes searching for keywords ineffective in all the email clients I've used. Nobody ever bothers to read or go through the quoted transcripts, why would you read the quoted-to-the-nth-degree text when you can read the original?
The worst example I found was quoted twenty-one levels deep. A three line response plus sig (naturally including one of those nonsense legal disclaimers about not reading the email if you aren't the intended recipient) followed by about thirty pages of quoted text starting with > then >> then >>> and so on to >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>. And it was my job to go through it, and the rest of the emails in the thread, in both directions, looking for anything relevent to the legal action. Even though I wasn't actively reading the quoted sections, the sheer volume of cruft to wade through is brain-melting. Counting the entire conversation, the original post was duplicated something like fifty or sixty times.
Fun times.
but this has no place on an email discussion list.
Agreed! But too many people replying with their smart phones and iProducts can't do anything else...
This is a major hot-button issue for me, The above is only scratching the surface.
I feel your pain :-)
-- Steve
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On 3/19/15 5:53 PM, Barry Warsaw wrote: people to top post is that their client will show in the message list a summary of the first line of the message, and they want that to be the new content to see if it is worth reading, as opposed to the quote of the message they have already decided to read or not. (of course, the answer is that it would be better if the client showed the first non-quote line if possible).
-- Richard Damon
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Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> wrote:
Tanstaafl replied:
And that is actually one of the few reasonable reasons that I've ever seen supporting the argument...
I somewhat concur; I understand the desire for the feature, and I think this is the first time I've seen a reasonable reason for it as well. I think it's a nice feature to have, generally. But I don't think this justifies top-posting because I'd prefer clients to collapse quoted material, attribution, and then show the first line (or few lines) of the message. I still prefer the logical point-counterpoint of an edited response I can read from the top down.
I also think we should stop offering mailing list digests, particularly because I don't see a need for them now that bandwidth to most Internet users is plentiful (plentiful enough to see widespread use of HTML email, for instance) and so many users pick gratis email hosting that imposes no quota on them (to maximize effectiveness of spying on users?). I'd be willing to reconsider my opinion on digests if there were some compelling reason(s) to continue digests. So far all I see in digests are the bad points: digests break threading, replies to digests contain far more quoted material than original material, and top posting makes digests even harder for me to figure out what is being replied to.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b5ad28d303effad0915a48572b4b304c.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
A couple points on top-posting...
I'm a top-poster and not ashamed of it. If I'm following a message thread, I remember the discussion and don't want to have to scroll through a weeks worth of responses just to get to the new content.
Some email clients strip all but the first message below the signature of the new message being created as a reply. That pretty much demolishes the rest of the message thread. In the case of responding to a full message thread, that means only the original post would be included with the reply.
In this response (using Thunderbird), I highlighted the text I wanted to respond to before clicking *Reply List* and Thunderbird only included the highlighted text below this response. That puts the pertinent content right below my reply.
Best Regards,
Mike
Mike Starr, Writer Technical Writer - Online Help Developer - WordPress Websites Graphic Designer - Desktop Publisher - Custom Microsoft Word templates (262) 694-1028 - mike@writestarr.com - http://www.writestarr.com President - Working Writers of Wisconsin http://www.workingwriters.org/
On 4/2/2015 12:45 PM, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
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On 4/2/2015 2:18 PM, Mike Starr <mike@writestarr.com> wrote:
This would only happen if you blindly quoted the entire message.
Not ONE 'bottom poster' (inline is more correct term) would EVER suggest doing that, but I do know more than one top-poster who refuses to acknowledge this, and submits the same tired INVALID argument as a reason to support their laziness.
Been doing this for many, many years (ever since TB enabled the feature).
below this response. That puts the pertinent content right below my reply.
When it belongs above it...
But whatever, I stopped caring much a long, long time ago when I realized top-posters will never get it simply because they don't want to.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b5ad28d303effad0915a48572b4b304c.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
That's what it seemed to me that J.B. was expressing... that the entire message thread would be repeated in each response.
However, "blindly quoting the entire message" is the default with many email tools (other than the few that scrub everything but the text immediately below the respondee's signature). Click *Reply* and that's what you get... and that would be the same whether you top-post or bottom-post. I try to be very conscious of it and trim whatever's not necessary but I sometimes forget as well.
I'll leave the discussion now... I've seen these top-post/bottom-post flame wars in the past. It's just like the toilet paper top/bottom argument. There is no *right way* to do it. It's all a matter of preference with good arguments on both sides.
Best Regards,
Mike
Mike Starr, Writer Technical Writer - Online Help Developer - WordPress Websites Graphic Designer - Desktop Publisher - Custom Microsoft Word templates (262) 694-1028 - mike@writestarr.com - http://www.writestarr.com President - Working Writers of Wisconsin http://www.workingwriters.org/
On 4/2/2015 2:57 PM, Tanstaafl wrote:
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ae33ee39670408e944f24e55db82bffb.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
The solutions is quite simple - use top-posting if you answering to the very whole message or thread (like this). It will save your time and would annoy nobody. (Don't forget to put your signature right after your answer to show others that there is nothing else below it from you to search for.)
Use inline posting if you want to answer to different parts of somebody's message separately.
Why keep using one scheme only?
Danil P.S. Never use bottom posting please... :)
2015-04-02 23:19 GMT+03:00 Mike Starr <mike@writestarr.com>:
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On 04/09/2015 12:25 AM, Danil Smirnov wrote:
Except those who receive digests or prefer to read the archives or actually need the quoted context to understand what you're talking about.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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On Thu, 4/9/15, Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> wrote:
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] I'd prefer clients had collapsing features, not top-post; do away with mailing list digests To: mailman-users@python.org Date: Thursday, April 9, 2015, 9:46 AM
On 04/09/2015 12:25 AM, Danil Smirnov wrote: this).
It will save your time and would annoy nobody.
Except those who receive digests or prefer to read the archives or actually need the quoted context to understand what you're talking about.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/jebva%40yahoo.com
I do not like top posting. With TP I have to read backwards through a conversation to understand what is going on. Makes no sense at all.
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Great example (below) of why I don't like bottom posting
Best Regards,
Mike
Mike Starr, Writer Technical Writer - Online Help Developer - WordPress Websites Graphic Designer - Desktop Publisher - Custom Microsoft Word templates (262) 694-1028 - mike@writestarr.com - http://www.writestarr.com President - Working Writers of Wisconsin http://www.workingwriters.org/
On 4/9/2015 9:49 AM, JB wrote:
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On 4/9/2015 8:07 AM, Mike Starr wrote:
Great example (below) of why I don't like bottom posting
I'd say it was a much better example of not trimming content and making it presentable; the quoted part could have been cut to 4-5 lines and preserved the context for reply. (And the list footer wasn't needed at all.)
z!
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On Thu, Apr 09, 2015 at 08:21:20AM -0700, Carl Zwanzig wrote:
I'd say it was a much better example of not trimming content and making it presentable;
Along with making one's MUA put signatures at the bottom…
-- "a difficulty for every solution" -- Samuel, on the Civil Service
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On 4/9/2015 11:21 AM, Carl Zwanzig <cpz@tuunq.com> wrote:
On 4/9/2015 8:07 AM, Mike Starr wrote:
Great example (below) of why I don't like bottom posting
Correct - this is what I meant when I said the vast majority of people who prefer bottom posting - and refer to it by that name - do NOT mean 'blindly quoting an entire message, signatures, footers and all, and adding their reply beneath it all'.
To promote such as a reasonable way to interact on mailing lists would be the height of absurdity.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b5ad28d303effad0915a48572b4b304c.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
And we can all say that our preferred method is the Platonic ideal of email replies but out there in the world, most users go with the default reply location set up in their email client (some of which default to top posting and some of which default to bottom posting) and if there's trimming being done, it's usually done by the email client (web or desktop), not the user. At least with top posting, I don't have to scroll through an entire digest to see the actual content of the reply. I got one like that today (a reply to a 15-message digest) and since I was already paying attention to the conversation there was no need for me to scroll whatsoever.
I'm promoting top-posting with trimming; you're promoting bottom posting with trimming. You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to. Neither one of us is right, neither one of us is wrong. We each have our preferences and if we each adhere to the approach we prefer, everything's fine. What we can't do is flog the uninformed users into obedience (oh how I wish we could). And tanstaafl, here's your free lunch... I put in an unnecessary CR/LF between paragraphs so you won't have an issue with reading my response <grin>.
Best Regards,
Mike
Mike Starr, Writer Technical Writer - Online Help Developer - WordPress Websites Graphic Designer - Desktop Publisher - Custom Microsoft Word templates (262) 694-1028 - mike@writestarr.com - http://www.writestarr.com President - Working Writers of Wisconsin http://www.workingwriters.org/
On 4/9/2015 3:13 PM, Tanstaafl wrote:
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/124f9bd3a2e84570d136e3d4be795943.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Mike Starr wrote:
Speaking of mail client behaviour, I noticed recently that if you select some text before hitting Reply, iOS's Mail app will only quote the selected material. It's a pity making the selection is so tedious (selection shortcuts only work in the reply, not in the original email), but they do seem to be trying to cater for people who don't simply quote everything.
Peter Shute
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On Thu, 9 Apr 2015, Mike Starr wrote:
I'm promoting top-posting with trimming; you're promoting bottom posting with trimming.
Well ,,, yes, trimming is really what is needed (and interleaving !) Quoting the entire message is annoying and wasteful of storage space and of one's attention !
Said that, bottom (or better interleaved if the message is long and has many subtopics unlike this one) posting is more legible, compare this one where I reply below the text and the example below the dashed line which is reversed.
Well ,,, yes, trimming is really what is needed (and interleaving !) Quoting the entire message is annoying and wasteful of storage space and of one's attention !
Said that, bottom (or better interleaved if the message is long and has many subtopics unlike this one) posting is more legible, compare this one where I reply ABOVE the text and the example ABOVE the dashed line which is "normal".
On Thu, 9 Apr 2015, Mike Starr wrote:
I'm promoting top-posting with trimming; you're promoting bottom posting with trimming.
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
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On Thu, 4/9/15, Mike Starr <mike@writestarr.com> wrote:
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] I'd prefer clients had collapsing features, not top-post; do away with mailing list digests To: mailman-users@python.org Date: Thursday, April 9, 2015, 11:07 AM
Great example (below) of why I don't like bottom posting
Best Regards,
Mike
Mike Starr, Writer Technical Writer - Online Help Developer - WordPress Websites Graphic Designer - Desktop Publisher - Custom Microsoft Word templates (262) 694-1028 - mike@writestarr.com - http://www.writestarr.com President - Working Writers of Wisconsin http://www.workingwriters.org/
On 4/9/2015 9:49 AM, JB wrote:
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/jebva%40yahoo.com
Why>? I followd the discussion perfectly until you to posted and broke the logic.
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JB...
It makes 10,000% more sense than doing what you just did (untrimmed bottom posting).
Your response only serves to provide massive ammunition for those arguing *against* bottom (inline/interleaved) posting.
Charles
On 4/9/2015 10:49 AM, JB <jebva@yahoo.com.dmarc.invalid> wrote:
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On 4/9/2015 1:25 AM, Danil Smirnov wrote:
And your premise is wrong already. Top posting on an email list is highly annoying to anyone that prefers to read context in order instead of upside down. I, and MANY like me, read left to right and TOP TO BOTTOM... it's just one example of plain, old fashion, good email etiquette. I realize there are those that don't read that way but they aren't posting to an email list using the English language either.
Steve
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On 4/9/2015 12:25 AM, Danil Smirnov wrote:
The solutions is quite simple - use top-posting if you answering to the very whole message or thread (like this).
Why keep using one scheme only?
P.S. Never use bottom posting please... :)
In order- You'd be amazed at what would annoy people.
Because I like it.
Sorry.
(As I've opined before, IME many people consider what we might call inline posting to be "bottom posting". I follow language that usage.)
It's not only about where you put the reply text, it's about how much of the original you retain. Users of one style are more apt to remove nothing from the original message while users of the other are apt to remove large chunks.
z!
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On Thu, 09 Apr 2015 08:56:21 -0700 Carl Zwanzig <cpz@tuunq.com> wrote:
Hello Carl,
(As I've opined before, IME many people consider what we might call inline posting to be "bottom posting". I follow language that usage.)
More and more these days, on many mailing lists, I see *real* bottom posting(1); Several screens of quoted text below which is added a word or two of reply. It's got to the stage for me that, when I see emails, the first thing I check is the scroll bar. If that indicates more than two screens of text, I simply ignore it - it's rare indeed that, on a mailing list, an email worth reading is that long.
(1) Possibly as a result of people misusing the term when they really mean in-line or interpolated posting.
-- Regards _ / ) "The blindingly obvious is / _)rad never immediately apparent" Buy some love at the five and dime You Have Placed A Chill In My Heart - Eurythmics
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Carl Zwanzig writes:
(As I've opined before, IME many people consider what we might call inline posting to be "bottom posting". I follow language that usage.)
Uh, right, Yoda. May the Farce be with you!
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9f4d051b7fd662818891f95fe8c9e815.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Quoting Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org>:
But whatever, I stopped caring much a long, long time ago when I realized top-posters will never get it simply because they don't want to.
Yes, it's a hopeless battle.
The consensus on most technical lists I've seen is very strongly in
favor of bottom posting, with top-posters subject to flaming. But
outside that world, I find top-posting to be the norm. I agree with
the logic of bottom-posting, because it is--well--logical, but cannot
hope to prevail.
David Benfell <benfell@parts-unknown.org>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5615a372d9866f203a22b2c437527bbb.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Thu, Apr 02, 2015 at 08:09:12PM -0700, David Benfell wrote:
The consensus on most technical lists I've seen is very strongly in
favor of bottom posting,
Surely not. Bottom-posting is, if anything, worse than top-posting. With top-posting at least you get to see the reply[1] at the top of the post, and can delete it and move on with your life. With bottom- posting you have to scroll past seven pages of quoted text before you get to see their reply.
Perhaps you mean interleaved or inline posting, as I've done here?
[1] Often one line. On technical lists, that's often "Works for me." On non-technical lists, "Me too!".
-- Steve
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9f4d051b7fd662818891f95fe8c9e815.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Quoting Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info>:
I had not seen this term before. But it makes sense to me and is
indeed what I meant.
-- David Benfell <benfell@parts-unknown.org>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b273ab068bc220d17a3e4c710c401c4b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 4/3/2015 4:55 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
Perhaps you mean interleaved or inline posting, as I've done here?
To the vast majority of people that use the terms at all, "bottom-posting" and "in-line posting" are IME used interchangeably and for the same style.
(Is this an in-line or bottom post? Who cares? It's not top-post. Call it 'usenet' or 'interleaved' style if you want.)
z!
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On Fri, Apr 03, 2015 at 08:02:03AM -0700, Carl Zwanzig wrote:
I would love to see your survey results that show that.
I haven't done any surveys, but in my anecdotal experience, I can tell you that the regulars on a number of Python mailing lists are aware of the difference. I can probably even find a post from a beginner who admitted to deliberately adding his reply to the very end of the quoted text, without trimming, because he had been mislead by the term "bottom-posting". That's what he'd been told to do: post at the bottom, right? He was actually quite relieved to be told he was allowed to interleave question and answer.
Apparently there is, or at least was in 2011, a plugin for Apple's Mail.app which enabled bottom-posting. The quoted email is inserted in its entirety above the user's response.
The Wikipedia article on posting styles distinguishes between the three:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style
although of course interleaved/bottom posting are indistinguishable when there is only a single point being replied to.
In any case, regardless of whether it is an overwhelming majority who (mis)use the term "bottom-posting" for interleaved replies, or a vanishingly small minority, I believe that as we are (I hope) technically-minded people who consider precision in language important, making that distinction is important and I shall continue to do so.
-- Steve
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On 4/3/2015 7:55 AM, Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> wrote:
Perhaps you mean interleaved or inline posting, as I've done here?
As I said earlier, this is what 99.999% of all people who say 'bottom-posting' mean, and to say otherwise is either just someone being pedantic, foolish, ignorant, or (more often imnsho) it is an outright trollish comment to make themselves feel better about being a lazy top-poster.
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On Sat, Apr 04, 2015 at 11:26:34AM -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
Did you know that 99.999% of all people who say "99.999% of all people" are just plucking that number out of thin air?
And which am I? You can pick more than one if you like.
-- Steve
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 4/2/2015 1:45 PM, J.B. Nicholson-Owens <jbn@forestfield.org> wrote:
Well, liomited bandwidth was never a reason (in my mind) for wanting digest versions of some email lists...
The main reason I may choose a digest version of a list is if it is high-volume, and/or I am more of a lurker than participant. In such a case digests makes the Inbox (or folder if they are filtered to one) less cluttered.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/b009b2809a98fc29d87d2ef8a9609005.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
I’d like it if digests could be either the full text of the emails or just a list of subject lines.
I don’t want to scroll through the full text of every message in the digest.
On 3 Apr 2015, at 6:06 am, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
On 4/2/2015 1:45 PM, J.B. Nicholson-Owens <jbn@forestfield.org> wrote:
Well, liomited bandwidth was never a reason (in my mind) for wanting digest versions of some email lists...
The main reason I may choose a digest version of a list is if it is high-volume, and/or I am more of a lurker than participant. In such a case digests makes the Inbox (or folder if they are filtered to one) less cluttered.
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/andrew.stuart%40superc...
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On 04/02/2015 12:13 PM, Andrew Stuart wrote:
I’d like it if digests could be either the full text of the emails or just a list of subject lines.
Mailman digests have a table of contents with just Subject: and From: name.
On some lists, where I'm only interested in very few topics, I subscribe to the MIME format digest. I read the TOC and often stop there and delete the digest. Some times I will go on and read a message or two of interest, and maybe open one individually and reply to it.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Please don't send direct to me, I'm on the list.
On 4/2/2015 3:13 PM, Andrew Stuart <andrew.stuart@supercoders.com.au> wrote:
I’d like it if digests could be either the full text of the emails or just a list of subject lines.
? Whats wrong with both? Every digest I've ever subscribed to has the list of email subjects at the top, then the content afterwards...
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/9f4d051b7fd662818891f95fe8c9e815.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Quoting Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org>:
Agreed. I see some users choosing digest options even of relatively
low volume lists that I host. I myself use the digest option for
certain low priority lists that I want to get to, but not right away.
David Benfell <benfell@parts-unknown.org>
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0df724a41a9440aea36563edd8738763.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Thu, 2 Apr 2015, Tanstaafl wrote:
On 4/2/2015 1:45 PM, J.B. Nicholson-Owens <jbn@forestfield.org> wrote:
I also think we should stop offering mailing list digests
Nobody forbids you as list administrator to stop offering digests on YOUR lists. But why would you like to forbid digests to administrators and users who appreciate it ?
I could not have said it better.
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
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Barry Warsaw writes:
This is an interesting question for me because I think the netiquette rules I've been using for decades may be changing.
http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/Teach/IntroSES/socsys.html
Yes-Virginia-economics-can-be-useful-ly y'rs,
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Barry Warsaw wrote:
I concur and I still consider this to be true on the grounds of legibility. I find it far more clear to read point followed by rebuttal instead of reading rebuttals followed by having to figure out which points were being rebutted.
I think users who prefer top-posting are mostly giving into their MUA's defaults. I don't think most users face MUA inability to edit quoted material. I find the users are also unwilling to put more time into editing, so they don't and now so many don't it is expected that Microsoft Outlook users (for example) will top-post.
Every modern (typically GUI) MUA I know of has a search feature, so I don't buy the notion that it's hard to sift through old emails. I do understand that it's hard to read poorly-reformatted quotes of old emails (a problem I see with top-posting replies) and I wouldn't trust quotes without going back to my copy of that email or a mailing list archive (if I don't have a copy of that post) to verify the quote.
I think modern MUAs in widespread use (with the exception of Thunderbird and its derivatives) don't do proper threading. Therefore many email users don't know what threading is from experience. Maybe some MUA will do threading and become popular and users will think threading is a new feature.
I also think it's right and proper to expect to pick up replies to mailing list posts on the list by default. I don't like having to include a header that tries to convey this desire to MUAs and I don't want another copy of any response sent to me in addition to a copy on the list. Unfortunately I don't know how to get Thunderbird to include the header on every mailing list reply without me having to tell it which addresses are mailing lists. I have a way I'd prefer Thunderbird to handle this but that would be off-topic for this discussion and mailing list.
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On Fri, 2015-03-20 at 22:39 -0500, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
I don't think a lot of designers of MUAs are willing to put more time into designing software that really meets the standards set by best practices for email in general, much less the requirements of list posting.
I find it quite distasteful to try to work around stupid software design. I'd far rather deal with software with predictable bugs than with software that treats me like an idiot, which is why I stick with Evolution for Linux.
Apple is the worst! Mac Mail is bad, and mail clients for iOS - iPhones and iPads - are worse.
So people are going to have to forgive me (or not) if I sometimes violate the rules of good netiquette. I cut other people a lot of slack in this regard.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On 2015-03-20, at 9:39 PM, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
Further to the point, between top posting and lack of editing, the digest format of list posts are essentially unreadable. Moreover, on more extended threads, entire digests can consist of a single post depending on how you set your size limits.
Although the ideal solution is obviously users changing their behaviour and or MUAs, I've wondered whether an "auto-trim" function within mailman would make sense (for digest users...)
Its been a thought provoking discussion btw, thanks to all.
al
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On Saturday 21 March 2015, Al Black wrote:
Yes! For every one, not just digest users. And it should default to removing all but one single level of quoted text (regardless of top or bottom posting) and be *user* setable to none removed or all quoted text removed.
Should also remove all quoted list banners and this should not be an easily changeable setting. Make them edit the source if they want to see seven list banners;-)
BTW, in my older version of KMail left clicking and *releasing* the 'Reply' button uses the default 'Reply' option. Left clicking and *holding* opens a dialog box with the following four options, Reply Reply to Author Reply to All Reply to Mailing-List
William
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On 3/21/2015 8:52 PM, William Bagwell wrote:
Settable by which user? The sender or the recipient?
And wouldn't a default of removing all but one level of quoted text make nonsense of some posts? E.g. in the passage above, one needs the inner quotation to know what the outer quotation refers to.
It seems to me correct editing of quotation sequences requires human thought, not just mechanical text manipulation. Even though some people expect their computers to think for them.
-- Larry Kuenning larry@qhpress.org
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I'd be happier if more clients at least allowed the option of using > to indicate quoting level, so it would be possible to edit them into a suitable format. And if html wasn't the default for so many clients.
When I try to manipulate an email full of quotes that are indicated by various methods including vertical lines down the left side and different coloured text, in an html editor that doesn't work properly, and which turns it all to mush if I convert to plain text because of line wrapping problems, it's easy to become discouraged.
Peter Shute
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On Sun, 2015-03-22 at 14:08 +1100, Peter Shute wrote:
For Linux users, Evolution has very intelligent handling of quotes. Not only are quotes indicated with ">" characters but reformatting a quoted paragraph preserves these in the right places. Copy and paste has a "Paste as quote" option which is very handy for consolidating quotes from several emails.
And if html wasn't the default for so many clients.
Don't get me started! To the best of my knowledge, there is no unified standard for HTML-ized email. Microsoft has "Rich Text", Apple has another standard. Digests can get mucked up beyond usability if people use HTML email and it's included in digests. Hopefully all HTMLized posts to a digested list are multipart/mixed with both a text/plain and a text/html part so the HTML can be nuked before its digested and/or sent out to subscribers. If not, all bets are off, but such emails are usually spam.
Nonetheless, IMHO HTMLized email the way of the future so we'd better get used to dealing with it.
Amen!
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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Lindsay Haisley wrote:
The default for MS Outlook seems to be HTML rather than Rich Text.
I've seen a plain text section that didn't match the html version (if I'm remembering that incident correctly).
Nonetheless, IMHO HTMLized email the way of the future so we'd better get used to dealing with it.
Yes, whether we like it or not. It's a pity though that such complex HTML is used. Do we really need anything more than the ability to bold and underline? I'd be happy with some of the basic Structured Text formatting commands, which have the advantage that they're still intelligible in plain text.
Peter Shute
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On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 10:22:24AM +1100, Peter Shute wrote:
Do we really need anything more than the ability to bold and underline?
Butterick (and I agree entirely with him here) is against underlining:
http://practicaltypography.com/underlining.html
I'd be happy with some of the basic Structured Text formatting commands
Generally speaking, if I'm writing a long mail, I'll use Markdown. A few readers will stylize it; but as observed, it looks fine as is.
-- "all the succession and repetition of massed humanity ... Those vile bodies"
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Peter Shute writes:
I've seen a plain text section that didn't match the html version (if I'm remembering that incident correctly).
Indeed, occasionally you'll see the arrogant "your MUA doesn't deal with MIME properly" notice in a text/plain MIME part, rather than in the preamble.
You'd be amazed what teenage girls will do in an HTML email using a WYSIWYG editor. The point of the brain damage is like proprietary drivers in the Linux kernel: trying to provide features that the competition doesn't, in a non-standard way so that they can't just fix their editors.
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On Wed, 2015-03-25 at 10:42 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
I've always admonished list owners for MM installations that I host at FMP to avoid HTML-ized email. It plays hell with digesting, and there's no single standard for interpreting it so that what the composer of an HTML-ized post may see in his/her WYSIWYG editor may or may not be what any particular recipient may see. It introduces an egregious amount of bloat into an email, and is a huge bandwidth suck when such an email is sent out via a list, not to mention that on a list a good fraction of recipients is pretty much guaranteed to not be able to see what the composer intended.
As the Internet has evolved, however, I've observed that there's a steady, unrelenting pressure toward enabling messaging of all sorts, including email, to handle a richer variety of content options - bolding, fonts, images, advanced formatting, etc. HTML appears to be the best markup standard for this and variations of it have been widely adopted for this purpose.
One of two things is eventually going to have to happen. Either people who design and publish standards for email are going to have to come to agreement on a proper standard for this kind of content enhancement, and people who design MUAs and email utilities such as mailing list managers are going to have to come to grips with these standards and implement them, or email as a form of communication will eventually go the way of Usenet, archie, gopher and other extinct (or nearly so) protocols and become an Internet relic along with all the spam that it makes possible. Email will be replaced for popular usage with such things as FB messaging and its descendants, and we'll see a movement away from public open standards toward proprietary protocols.
Email as a concept is extremely powerful, and how this plays out will be definitive in how the Internet itself evolves. Running a small online web hosting and ESP provision service, I've come to learn that when people's websites go down, they'll call and bitch about it and implore you to fix it ASAP, but if their email goes down they'll come looking for you with a rope. Human communication is vital, and full communication on the Internet must eventually involve a visual as well as a textural component, just as verbal face to face communication involves body language.
Teenage girls may indeed lead the way, just as we can learn what next year's high fashion in womens' wear will be by observing what hookers are wearing this year.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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Lindsay Haisley writes:
We have that, IMO. It's called HTML5 + <link rel=stylesheet ...>. Unfortunately, class and id attributes can easily be abused, but even so it's not hard to be disciplined if you want to be disciplined.
"Aye, there's the rub." They don't want to. It involves more thought and less monopoly power.
I'm not so pessimistic.
along with all the spam that it makes possible.
I'm not so optimistic. ;-)
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At Wed, 25 Mar 2015 10:42:23 +0900 "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote:
Give almost *anyone* a big box of Crayolas, and you almost always get an instant 3 year old...
-- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services heller@deepsoft.com -- Webhosting Services
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On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 10:22:24AM +1100, Peter Shute wrote:
What Outlook, Hotmail etc. call "Rich Text" is in fact HTML, not to be confused with Microsoft's interchange Rich Text Format, RTF.
There is an "Enriched Text" standard for email, which supports basic formatting without the bulk and security implementations of HTML, but alas nobody uses it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_text
-- Steve
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On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 02:31:08PM +1100, Peter Shute wrote:
I understand that Outlook's Rich Text Format is actually the old win.dat format:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Neutral_Encapsulation_Format
Recent versions of Outlook apparently automatically convert "Rich Text" to HTML when you send to "an Internet recipient" (I assume that means a non-local user when using Exchange), which might explain why selecting Rich Text in Outlook appears to send HTML, and why win.dat attachments are now so rare. I don't think I've seen one in the wild for a decade or more.
https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Change-the-message-format-to-HTML-R...
If anyone cares enough to look for email sent from Outlook, you can probably determine for yourself what it is sending by inspecting the MIME type of the attachments, or looking at the raw content of the email. If you see lots of formatting commands inside angle brackets < ... > it's probably HTML, if they are inside braces { ... } (but they won't be ;-) it's probably the Microsoft RTF exchange format, and if you see a win.dat or winmail.dat attachment it will be "Outlook Rich Text".
-- Steve
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On 3/24/2015 10:30 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> wrote:
What Outlook, Hotmail etc. call "Rich Text" is in fact HTML, not to be confused with Microsoft's interchange Rich Text Format, RTF.
And Outlook's 'HTML' is badly broken due to its reliance on the Word HTML rendering engine.
Why MS decided to change from IE to Word for the rendering engine is inexplicable - unless it was a bran-dead attempt to get people who just buy Outlook to buy the full Office suite (or at least Word too)...
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On Wed, 2015-03-25 at 08:49 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
The Word HTML generator has to be one of the worst WYSIWYG HTML code generators ever published. I've had to do manual repairs on the broken, bloated, ugly HTML which comes out of MS Word.
You can bet that the decision, coming from MS, was based on business considerations rather than any thought of technical merit.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On Saturday 21 March 2015, Larry Kuenning wrote:
Settable by which user? The sender or the recipient?
Recipient of course, sender has no way of knowing what the recipient prefers.
Not for us. Someone joining the conversation mid stream might but that is what archives are for.
I'm sure there would be occasionally maglings when some one starts a sentence with with an alternate quote character. Lindsay Haisley raises the valid point that HTML mail would be most difficult to include in such a filter.
Oh well, I can dream...
William
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The email interface for our ticket system attempts to avoid these sorts of problems in comments by automatically stripping all quoted text. It undoubtedly could work better than it does (perhaps a more recent version does), and this situation is certainly different from a mailing list, but it has convinced me that any programmatic trimming of content is bound to cause problems for users.
Despite this, due to the preponderance of the very issues discussed in this thread, the feature is still useful and enabled.
--
Matthew Needham mneedham@hdfgroup.org 217-531-6110
The HDF Group 1800 South Oak Street, Suite 203 Champaign, IL 61820
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On Sat, 21 Mar 2015, Al Black wrote:
Further to the point, between top posting and lack of editing, the digest format of list posts are essentially unreadable.
Do you mean the MIME digests produced by mailman ? I totally disagree, they are one of the best features.
Subscribing in digest mode allows me to receive one cumulative post per day (about, unless there is more traffic) and deal with them not interrupting my other activities.
A proper MUA shall allow to read each message in the digest as if it were a single e-mail (and reply, archive, forward etc. etc.).
In the case of my MUA (Alpine) I've programmed it so that a single keystroke (for me it is capital D) will expand the digest in a temporary folder where I deal with individual messages.
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Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
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On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
But people don't have proper MUAs, or if they do, many don't know how to use them. So if you allow the digest version, somebody will respond to one of the messages in the digest version with a oneliner response which is top posted, followed by the quotation of the whole digest, and with a pointless Subject: (digest number) thrown in for good measure.
Thomas Gramstad thomas@ifi.uio.no
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On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 17:46 +0100, Thomas Gramstad wrote:
A proper MUA shall allow to read each message in the digest as if it were a single e-mail (and reply, archive, forward etc. etc.).
I know of exactly one that's "proper" in this regard. One of the reasons I keep Evolution as my primary MUA is because it allows me to extract a message/rfc822 part from a multipart/mixed MIME structure and save it _as an email_ in the mail folder of my choice, at which point I can deal with it as I wish.
T-bird doesn't do this, or didn't used to. Certainly Apple mail products don't even come close, nor do Microsoft MUAs. Does anyone know of any others that can do this? This ability is kind of my litmus test for an MUA.
I've found this quite useful in the past for emails identified as spam by SpamAssassin which are in fact not. I can pull them out of the wrapper that SpamAssassin puts around them and put them into my Inbox.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On 03/23/2015 10:55 AM, Lindsay Haisley wrote:
As far back as I can remember, T-bird does do this. It will display all messages in a multipart/digest inline, but also list them as 'attachments' which can be opened in a separate T-bird window and/or saved to a file.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 11:23 -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote:
T-bird comes close, but no cigar. I've tinkered with it to try to make it do what Thomas suggested was proper (with which I agree). T-bird treats a message/rfc822 attachment as it would a text/plain attachment. You can do whatever you wish with the attachment _except_ pull it into a mail folder as a valid email. I may be missing something, but as I say this is my litmus test for an MUA which treats me like a technically educated human, so I've poked at a number of different versions of it and never been able to make it behave this way.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, Lindsay Haisley wrote:
I didn't. You misattributed a previous post to me.
My suggestion is to turn off the digest option unless you'd start losing/not getting subscribers to a significant degree. (Which would typically occur for really high volume lists. Most lists aren't.)
Thomas Gramstad thomas@ifi.uio.no
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On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 20:06 +0100, Thomas Gramstad wrote:
I didn't. You misattributed a previous post to me.
I'm sorry, my bad. I got tangled up in the quote levels. Lucio Chiappetti said it.
A proper MUA shall allow to read each message in the digest as if it were a single e-mail (and reply, archive, forward etc. etc.).
My apology.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On 03/23/2015 11:34 AM, Lindsay Haisley wrote:
Correct. You can't just move it to one of your existing mail folders without machinations.
Interestingly, there is an undigestify add-on for T-bird <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/undigestify/>.
It will explode a digest into individual messages in the same folder, but it only works with RFC 1153 digests (Mailman's plain format). It doesn't work with MIME format digests.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 12:20 -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote:
The nice thing about Evolution's capability in this regard is that it will work with _any_ multipart/mixed or equivalent package containing message/rfc822 parts. I use it, as I said, for pulling valid emails out of false-positive captures by SpamAssassin. This is kind of the equivalent of a browser knowing what to do with images or PDFs.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 11:23 -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote:
I haven't dealt with MIME-format digests from MM for quite a while. I assume that these are functionally attachments with a MIME type of message/rfc822, yes? If not, then IMHO they should be. If they're not, then there's no help for it, and there's no MUA out there which will do what Thomas suggests and T-bird's behavior is as good as it gets.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On 03/23/2015 11:44 AM, Lindsay Haisley wrote:
Yes. The MIME type of the digest part is multipart/digest. The individual messages are message/rfc822 sub-parts.
The overall message is multipart/mixed with maybe a text/plain part for digest_header, two text/plain parts for the boiler plate and the TOC, the multipart/digest part and maybe a text/plain part for digest_footer.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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On Mon, 2015-03-23 at 11:58 -0700, Mark Sapiro wrote:
Yes. The MIME type of the digest part is multipart/digest. The individual messages are message/rfc822 sub-parts.
So ideally, a "proper" MUA should be able to extract and deal with the message/rfc822 sub-parts as emails in their own right.
Pretty much what one would expect.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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Lindsay Haisley writes:
Yes. Most Emacs-based MUAs (all the ones I've used, which is about 6), including even the horrible old RMail, can do this. Mutt and IIRC Alpine can too.
There's also an older format (RFC 974, I believe). The Emacs-based MUAs can folderize such digests, too, or "explode" them into individual messages and add them to a folder (usually just the current folder).
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On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, Lindsay Haisley wrote:
Same behaviour I get with alpine (although not native, see below).
I tried T-bird only to help a friend to stay away from Microsoft MUAs, or ISP webmailers. I was deluded about it (for instance the way to handle the addressbook in alpine is far superior) but did not try MIME digest handling. I did not try Fossa-Mail (which stays to T-bird the same way Palemoon stays to Firefox). Did not try Mutt (of which I heard much good).
People here use either Alpine, or Kmail, or Squirrel web mailer or T-bird.
To be fair, the native handling of MIME digests in Alpine is far from elegant. You can View the index of the digest (as the index of attachments in any multipart message), and if you point to one of the message/rfc822 components in the (crowded) index and click, it will open it as an e-mail.
I overcame this using the capability of pine to program user keystrokes, and to feed messages in external scripts. So I point to the digest message, and type a capital D. That will spawn a one-liner script and then move to the folder contains the expanded digest.
The one-liner uses a procmail utility to split the digest into a folder: formail +1 -ds >! /poseidon/lucio/mail/temporary
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
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On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, Thomas Gramstad wrote:
On Mon, 23 Mar 2015, Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
Subscribing in digest mode allows me to receive one cumulative post per day
which is something many people can appreciate (at least those who subscribe to mailing list, and then complain because they are interrupted in their work by too many new mails arriving)
Well, sorry, too bad for them ! :-)
So if you allow the digest version
Digest version is something the (knowledgeable) user enables in the personal setting.
I may agree it would not be a good idea for the list administrator to configure a list to send MIME digests *as default*, but it is good for users to be able to enable them.
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
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On Tue, 24 Mar 2015, Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
How can mail "interrupt"? Turn off noisy bells and whistles, sort list mail to their proper folders to be read at a suitable time, and exercise some work discipline! :)
Mail arrives all the time anyway, so people need to be able to deal with that.
As list owner / moderator I can decide to disable this setting, which is something many people appreciate, as it prevents hard to read comments on big "blobs" of text, and dysfunctional Subject: lines.
"Well, sorry, too bad for them !" :-)
Thomas Gramstad thomas@ifi.uio.no
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On 3/24/2015 8:59 AM, Thomas Gramstad wrote:
How can mail "interrupt"? [...] Mail arrives all the time anyway, so people need to be able to deal with that.
Exactly. Mail arrives when it does and I read it when I do. I really don't know why so many people feel compelled to check each message as it arrives.
I also don't generally understand most people's perceived need for digests*. IME they only work well when the list is well-moderated, which usually involved grouping topics and some editing (removing excessive quoting, for one). I'm on one list that does that and it works nicely, all the rest of my lists, and there must be 20-30, are individual messages. It works for me.
*also IME these people tend to think 20 total messages a day is a lot of email, and one digest email of 20 individual messages still only counts as one in their minds.
There's also a user-discipline issue of replying to mid-thread messages, but that's another rathole.
Laura- thanks for the discussion of the pre-quoting years.
z!
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Carl Zwanzig wrote:
Have you ever been in the situation where you're waiting for an important email which must be acted on quickly, and your mailbox is also suddenly receiving a flood of emails from a normally quiet list? It's so easy to miss the important emails, especially on a phone with it's tiny screen.
Many of us deal with this by creating a message rule that filters the unimportant list mail to a folder to be read at leisure. But many people don't know how to create message rules. When pop3 mail was common it wasn't possible to have the rules running server-side, so many users still don't even know it's possible. So they panic and either:
- unsubscribe
- reply to the list demanding that people stop talking about this off topic subject
- change to digest mode
Peter Shute
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0df724a41a9440aea36563edd8738763.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Wed, 25 Mar 2015, Peter Shute wrote:
Have you ever been in the situation where you're waiting ...
Many of us deal with this by creating a message rule that filters the unimportant list mail to a folder to be read at leisure.
I have procmail rules which filter particular e-mails to particular folders which I check once per day, but for the mailing list in normal operation I prefer to receive a (sort-of-daily) MIME digest in my main inbox.
I have two rules which divert mailing list posts to two folders when I am on holiday (so I can check the main inbox remotely with less messages): one of them is actually linked to /dev/null and is for what I call "secondary" lists, the other one collects the posts of the "primary" lists to be read when I return.
It is also possible (at least in mailman lists) to set one's own subscription to "nomail", but if one has many lists, it's too boring to do it (and reset it later) for each list, easier to filter collectively.
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
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On Tue, 24 Mar 2015, Thomas Gramstad wrote:
I am not saying I am one of those who are so annoyed when for instance one gets "me too" replies on an internal organization discussion list (or simply condolences for an obituary of a colleague) ... in which case I suggest them to use digest mode.
However mailing lists are usually a second priority to our main activity, be they discussion or technical support ones. So while it is good to reply asap to a person-to-person mail message, it is also good to wait to deal with mailing list messages. This is less distracting, allows to cool down discussions, to enforce the rule of one-post-per-day in the policy of some mailing lists etc. etc. ... so thanks to mailman authors for having it !
It is surely in your power and rights :-)
Usually the clueless which will reply to a digest are the same clueless who are unable to turn it on if it is off by default, and the same clueless unable to find a proper MUA and use it.
Or "pity for them" :-) ... the poor "knowledgeable users"
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
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Thomas Gramstad wrote:
All this talk about digests and being able to extract the original emails prompted me to try setting one of my subscriptions to digest mode.
I had previously tried this and found that the resulting emails were presented to me in Outlook as one long email, and that replying to one of the contained emails involved editing out all the other emails, and adjusting the subject line. The reply behaviour of our list's digest members suggests they have to do the same thing (but often forget).
But this time I tried unticking the "Plain" option for my subscription. I was surprised to see that they did start coming through as individual attachements, and that I could open them and reply to them "properly". This works in both Outlook and iOS Mail.
But all I see is an index and a long list of unnamed attachments. If I want to read them, I have to open them one by one to see what's in them, or look at the index numbers and count through the attachements to find the right one. Is this normal? Perhaps this is something to do with convert_html_to_plaintext being set to On? We also have mime_is_default_digest set to Plain.
Peter Shute
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 03/24/2015 02:03 PM, Peter Shute wrote:
But this time I tried unticking the "Plain" option for my subscription. I was surprised to see that they did start coming through as individual attachements, and that I could open them and reply to them "properly". This works in both Outlook and iOS Mail.
But all I see is an index and a long list of unnamed attachments. If I want to read them, I have to open them one by one to see what's in them, or look at the index numbers and count through the attachements to find the right one. Is this normal? Perhaps this is something to do with convert_html_to_plaintext being set to On? We also have mime_is_default_digest set to Plain.
"Outlook and iOS Mail". Both are notorius, non-compliant MUAs. There are lots of MUAs that will render a MIME digest in a useful way and still let you open and reply to individual messages. I don't know about iOS devices, and MUAs on mobile devices are a sorry lot, but reasonably recent versions of K9 Mail on Android will at least render a MIME format digest in a readable way.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 03/24/2015 02:53 PM, Peter Shute wrote:
So this is normal behaviour for these clients? I wouldn't see anything different if those settings I mentioned were different? I'm still pleasantly surprised that changing the Plain setting lets me access the digest as well as this.
No. This has nothing to do with convert_html_to_plaintext or any other content filtering settings, and mime_is_default_digest affects only the plain/MIME digest format choice for new subscribers. Once you are a list member, you (or the list admin) control your setting and the default is irrelevant.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Peter Shute writes:
Don't expect Microsoft and Apple MUAs to implement Internet standards sanely, because they don't. Those MUAs are equivalent to the large button cellphones designed for children and the elderly: very easy to for basic operations (and in the case of these MUAs, with lots of attention to "groupware" like calendars).
But people who use those MUAs are going to lose when presented with sophisticated or high-volume mail flows. If you have a lot of them on a list, disable digests. If they need digests, tell them to get a real MUA or shut up. We can't do anything about the design principles Apple and Microsoft use except deplore them (and we could be wrong -- look at the market valuations of those companies ;-).
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 03/23/2015 02:54 AM, Lucio Chiappetti wrote:
I think he's referring to the difficulty of reading (in particular) the plain format digest when it's full of top posted "me too" replies with quotes of quotes ...
Trying to find the original material amongst the quotes which you've already seen multiple times in the same digest is daunting to say the least.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/edcca44d385d597bda2fc9af28a5a18c.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Hey everyone,
On 2015-03-23, at 1:26 PM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
Thanks Mark, that's my point precisely. What I've heard from users is that the mime digests are better but it depends on their MUA(s).
I spent a few hours yesterday thinking about a "cleaner" to improve the signal noise for the kind of posts were talking about. Not a simple problem to solve (well for me anyway).
al
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 03/23/2015 04:06 PM, Al Black wrote:
I spent a few hours yesterday thinking about a "cleaner" to improve the signal noise for the kind of posts were talking about. Not a simple problem to solve (well for me anyway).
It's a very hard problem. You can see some of my attempts at this at <http://www.msapiro.net/scripts/MoreHolds.py>. A version of the rejectquote.txt template used by this script is at <http://www.msapiro.net/scripts/rejectquote.txt>
This handler is currently installed on my production site with the parameters as in the URL above, which in particular means RATIO is set to zero so no posts are held or rejected for excessive quoting. (The other holds are for no Subject:, digest Subject: or quoting of digest boilerplate.)
The calculation of quoted_count and unquoted_count and addition of same to the decoration-data is still done so that one can put something like
Experimental software on this Mailman installation thinks this post contained %(unquoted_count)s characters of new/original text and %(quoted_count)s characters of text quoted/included from prior list posts.
Into a list's msg_header (or footer) to try to educate people, but only one test list on my site has such.
For my first attempt at actually doing this in production, I think RATIO was set to 4 and REJECT_QUOTES was False (actually not implemented yet). The idea was I could hold some messages and edit them before bouncing them back to the list, and people might learn to do better.
I soon decided this was putting all the burden on me and users had little motivation to change, so I implemented REJECT_QUOTES and set it True.
The end result is at least some people wanted to top post and quote the entire message to which they were replying and they would go to extra trouble to edit the quoted material so I wouldn't recognize it as such or just paste in garbage to lower the ratio of quoted to unquoted. I.e. they spent more time and effort trying to bypass the rule than it would take to just do the right thing.
My main production list is the general discussion list for my cycling club. In the end, the club asked me to stop trying and I complied. A few people did learn and change their style, but some of those have since reverted.
Another interesting (to me at least) is the way in which convention and MUA design operates with relatively non-technical folks. I almost always reply to any email by interleaving my replies within whatever bits of quoted material I leave in the message as necessary to establish context. I've had friends say to me "I really like the way you reply to emails. How do you do that?"
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0df724a41a9440aea36563edd8738763.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Fri, 20 Mar 2015, J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
Every modern (typically GUI) MUA I know of has ...
I use a non-GUI MUA (Alpine) and I find it has all the features I can imagine to want (some of which were "user programmed")
I think modern MUAs in widespread use (with the exception of Thunderbird and its derivatives) don't do proper threading.
Alpine has threading, but I have not enabled it for e-mail (while I use it for Usenet newsgroups ... am I old enough ? :-)).
If I want to go back to a thread in a mailing list discussion (which I do not archive locally), I go to the list archive.
For personal (work) correspondence I need no threading. I archive message in separate folders by project/topic, and I can zoom in by subject.
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Barry Warsaw" <barry@list.org>
The traditional method for technical conversation mailing lists.
If the question has a 1 paragraph or less reply and won't engender a thread, then I can just barely tolerate top posting.
If the person replying is on a mobile MUA, where it's a bitch to deal with, I'll tolerate it.
Otherwise, I will take the time to clean up their reply, and hope that they catch on.
As for actually convincing the MUA to reply the right place, a shocking number don't understand RFC... 5369 headers, and the ones that don't rarely have "Reply to Recipient", which is a decent heuristic for most mailing lists.
So you have to reply all, and then the recipient gets the personal copy first, and replies to it off-list, and that way lies madness and sweaty palms...
Cheers, -- jra
Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274
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On 3/19/2015 2:19 PM, Andrew Stuart wrote:
It all depends, and is rife with arguments. Look on line for "top-posting/bottom-posting" and "reply-list/reply-sender" and you'll find many, ahem, strident arguments for each way.
For most lists, I press the "reply-list" button, delete the extraneous text, and enter my response (as I've done here).
At the very least, remove duplicated list footers, since each message will get a new one.
z!
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On Thu, 2015-03-19 at 14:56 -0700, Carl Zwanzig wrote:
In many mail user agents, when you press the "Reply" button the program will analyze the headers, determine that the post being replied to came from a list and offer a "Reply to List" option in addition to a simple reply, which generally goes privately to the original poster.
Andrew said:
It's pretty simple, actually. The list address goes into either the To or Cc field, and if you want others, not on the list to receive a copy, put them in the Cc field also, but don't go overboard because some systems will barf on "Too many recipients". Two or three additional recipients shouldn't be a problem. Addresses can be separated with commas, or with semicolons in the case of MS mail products such as Outlook.
It is polite, though, to make sure you're not sending duplicate posts to people by doing a "Reply to All" which will probably send a copy of your reply to _both_ the list and the original poster. I think that this is a common point of confusion. "All" in this context doesn't mean "all the list subscribers", but "all the addresses in the headers."
As far as editing, top posting, bottom posting, etc. it's just a matter of using good sense. All communication should get as much meaning into its context as possible, with as little "noise" as possible. So as Carl said, pull out extra footers and everything else that's not relevant to the immediate focus of the conversation. If you can read your own post, and it makes good sense and gets your point across, as concisely as possible, it doesn't matter what you cut or leave, or if you top post or bottom post.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/124f9bd3a2e84570d136e3d4be795943.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Lindsay Haisley wrote:
In all the mail clients I use, I get a choice of Reply, which for this list will reply only to the original sender, or Reply All, which sends it to the original sender and the list. If I want to reply just to the list, I have to hit Reply All and then delete the original sender's address. I usually don't bother, and I assumed most people don't. Has that been annoying people? I thought mailman was smart enough not to send another copy to people in the Cc list.
I think people are generally limited by whatever their mail client will support. Outlook likes to set you up for top posting. I've only managed to get my Outlook to generate the > quote indicators by telling it to open my mail in Plain Text format, and I edited the "Original Message" headers to the simple form above manually. I don't like to interquote in a section claiming to be "Original Message" because to me that implies it's been left intact.
When I had a Blackberry, I had no choice by to top quote. The quoted material is either there or not there on a Blackberry, it can't be edited. Now I have an iPhone, I can edit the message and the header is acceptable for interquoting.
We often see messages here that have replies alternating between top and bottom quoting, which can be very confusing, but often people have little choice.
I agree with the other reply that said people are tending towards top quoting more and more. Many people simply top quote as encouraged by their mail client, and haven't considered that there's any other way. Often people only read the reply above the start of the quoted material, and ignore interquoted material anyway!
Peter Shute
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 03/19/2015 04:50 PM, Peter Shute wrote:
On Mailman lists at least it is a user option to receive or not receive two copies of list posts in which they are also directly addressed. Thus, I feel it is never necessary to remove the poster's address from a 'reply all'. In fact there is at least one good reason not to. Namely, the poster might be a digest member or even on some lists, a non-member, and 'reply all' gets them a copy now as opposed to in the next digest or never.
That said, I tend to use 'reply list' when it's available.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/8bd771fe9b0ed16c4aa1907b52bcaf65.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Hi Mark,
Our subscriber dynamic on our discussion lists is slightly different. While Mailman may eliminate the duplicate email sends to folks who have their messages replied to by readers, is important that we achieve two things with our list messages:
- We want all replies to go to the list, however, we do not want the sender’s email disclosed (this are medical discussion lists and we need to preserve some basic contact privacy)
- We DO want the sender’s name to be visible as part of the FROM since the senders may not include their name in the body of their message.
What we would like is: a) DMARC compliance and munging b) the From to read "sender via list name", i.e. “Dean Suhr - via Mailman-Users” for this list c) no matter if the user clicks REPLY or REPLY-ALL the reply goes only to the list
We want to be able to provide a controlled experience for all participants without having to change their personal behaviors. Prior to DMARC we were able to provide this capability (with sender name as from and all replies to the list) for our users.
I am struggling with v2.1.18-1 to establish this configuration. If this option combination is not available can you point me to where in the code I might have to manually tweak?
Thanks,
Dean
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 03/31/2015 11:28 AM, Dean Suhr wrote:
OK
I don't understand how you were suppressing the sender's email address. Are you sure it wasn't there and just nut displayed by the email client you were using to read the mail. I.e. MS Outlook and several other mail clients, even K9 mail on my android phone, will by default only show the display name and not the address if there is a display name in From:
I am struggling with v2.1.18-1 to establish this configuration. If this option combination is not available can you point me to where in the code I might have to manually tweak?
If on General Options, you set
from_is_list = Munge From first_strip_reply_to = Yes reply_goes_to_list = This list
Also to prevent Privacy options... -> Sender filters -> dmarc_moderation_action from superceding from_is_list on posts from yahoo.com or aol.com, that setting should either be Accept or Munge From.
This will almost get you there, but the original From: address will be added to the Reply-To: header in delivered posts. This was changed in 2.1.19 to add the address to Cc: instead per <https://bugs.launchpad.net/mailman/+bug/1407098>, but it will be there in one of those headers so that reply-all will explicitly include the original From:.
To suppress this addition of the original From: to some header would require code modification or setting anonymous_list = Yes, but setting anonymous_list = Yes will completely hide the posters name.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/46f05b3d8ce25ad889788c9d34219727.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Fri, 2015-03-20 at 10:50 +1100, Peter Shute wrote:
I'm kinda retro when comes to mail clients. My MUA of choice is Evolution for Linux. It's buggy, the source code is bloated, and there are some things it doesn't do well and probably never will. That having been said, it's the only MUA I know of that treats users as technically proficient adults - something I need as a mail administrator. See <http://www.fmp.com/living_with_evolution.html>
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Lindsay Haisley writes:
As far as editing, top posting, bottom posting, etc. it's just a matter of using good sense.
But there's one aspect of good sense you left out, namely "When in Rome...". This list strongly prefers interlinear posting (posting below the relevant paragraph) if you reply to more than one point at a time.
Other lists equally strongly prefer top-posting.
I don't know of anybody who prefers "bottom-posting" (and it's a bad idea to use that term as I've seen newbies instructed to "bottom-post" do exactly that, leaving 50 lines of original text and adding two lines at the bottom).
Which is used does matter, as (1) it's easier to find the new text if everybody does it the same and (2) I at least make far fewer "the post has no new content" errors with posts that follow the list convention than those that don't.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 3/20/2015 1:29 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote:
And I've seen many people use this exact example of 'bottom or inline posting' in support of their argument in favor of top-posting, ignoring arguments about trimming all irrelevant quoted text, implying that anyone and everyone who supports bottom/inline posting wants you to quote everything, untrimmed, and put your response below it.
It irks me no end...
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/46f05b3d8ce25ad889788c9d34219727.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Sent from the Dehut/Haisley iPad email <household@fmp.com>
Which generally makes the best sense of all, to me at least. I do have one friend who finds this to be confusing, however.
I never quite understood all the fuss about top posting. The reason behind quoting in the first place is to provide context for a reply, but some MUAs make it very difficult to not top post.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Lindsay Haisley writes:
I never quite understood all the fuss about top posting.
Usenet over UUCP via 300 baud modems on backbone servers with 5MB disks.[1]
The reason behind quoting in the first place is to provide context for a reply, but some MUAs make it very difficult to not top post.
Friends don't let friends.... <wink />
Footnotes: [1] I think I'm exaggerating here, but not by more than two orders of magnitude. It really did matter then.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/682b7115267957111b90d648ac5ab780.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Sat, 21 Mar 2015 13:39:00 +0900 "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote:
Hello Stephen,
Usenet over UUCP via 300 baud modems on backbone servers with 5MB disks.[1]
Same went for FTNs, etc.
-- Regards _ / ) "The blindingly obvious is / _)rad never immediately apparent" I'd hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain Sweet Child O'Mine - Guns 'N' Roses
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/0df724a41a9440aea36563edd8738763.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Usenet over UUCP via 300 baud modems on backbone servers with 5MB disks.[1]
I adverse top-posting (and entire quoting of the whole replied message, or worst, thread) NOT because it is wasting bandwidth, NOT because it is wasting diskspace when archived ... but because it is disturbing to me to archive in each new message the entire content I already archived in the previous ones of the same thread.
Of course assuming we are talking of a serious correspondence worth being archived, not a chat.
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
Do not like Firefox >=29 ? Get Pale Moon ! http://www.palemoon.org
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/46f05b3d8ce25ad889788c9d34219727.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Fri, 2015-03-20 at 10:07 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
I don't use T-bird much, but my version here (31.5.0 for Linux) presents a "Reply List" button when a list post is highlighted in the index.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/56f108518d7ee2544412cc80978e3182.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 03/20/2015 06:52 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
Actually, it doesn't work that way in any of the MUAs I know. But many offer a Reply List choice if the message has a List-Post: header. Thunderbird is one. Mutt offers an 'L' command to reply to the list.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 3/20/2015 10:03 AM, Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> wrote:
I'd really like to know which email user agents really do this.
Actually, it doesn't work that way in any of the MUAs I know.
Which was my point... ;)
Yep, use CTRL-SHIFT+L all the time on lists - but then get irritated when someone CC's me individually, because it never fails that it is the one sent directly that I end of trying to reply to, for which Reply-To-List doesn't work, so I have to delete it and try again on the duplicate from the list...
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/46f05b3d8ce25ad889788c9d34219727.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Fri, 2015-03-20 at 09:52 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
My MUA of choice is Evolution, formerly from Ximian but now a gnome GPL project. It has this feature, as does Thunderbird, which is fairly popular. I was under the impression that Outlook and/or Outlook Express had it too, but I'm not sure about this.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 3/20/2015 10:27 AM, Lindsay Haisley <fmouse@fmp.com> wrote:
Ummm... this is not what you said initially.
You said "In many mail user agents, when you press the "Reply" button the program will analyze the headers, determine that the post being replied to came from a list and offer a "Reply to List" option..."
The 'Reply-To-List' button in Thunderbird is a completely separate button. Also, when you click the normal 'Reply' button, it simply replies, it doesn't 'analyze any headers' or present you with any other options or choices... same for every other MUA I know of.
So, it sounds like you just sortof misspoke... ;)
Admittedly - the 'Smart Reply' button in Thunderbird *does* actually actively change behavior depending on whether or not the message has list headers (and also whether or not there are multiple recipients), but as I said, I don't get to use it much since I can't put it on the main toolbar (I do have a bug open for this)...
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On Fri, 2015-03-20 at 10:49 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
This is the way Evolution works.
In T-bird there's a pane with message headers and action buttons below the index and above the preview pane. If a list message is highlighted in the index, there's a "Reply List" button presented right next to the "Reply" button. If a post isn't a list post, this button is absent. This is even simpler than what Evolution does.
If T-bird and Evolution are NOT looking at headers and offering an appropriate list reply option, then how are they determining when to display this button, and when not to?
I think is the "out of the box" behavior of T-bird for Linux, but I may be misspoken on this ;)
So, it sounds like you just sortof misspoke... ;)
Only superficially. The point is that both of these MUAs are list-aware and offer options appropriately.
I don't get to use it much since I can't put it on the main toolbar (I do have a bug open for this)...
I don't use T-bird much at all, except as a MUA to distribute FMP's monthly invoices and statements, and it has issues which make it problematic for this purpose unless one is careful.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 3/20/2015 11:09 AM, Lindsay Haisley <fmouse@fmp.com> wrote:
This is the way Evolution works.
Ok, but my point is, one MUA with a tiny user base is very far from 'many mail user agents'. So, again - looks like you mis-spoke. Not a crime, I do it sometimes, but it is annoying when someone argues nits just to avoid simply acknowledging a mistake.
The Reply List button is only there if you put it there, unless recent updates have started putting it there by default (it never was before).
Again, my point is this doesn't happen *when you click the REPLY button* this context) initiated some kind of testing of the headers to try to
- you said (not implied, not hinted, you said it outright) that clicking 'the Reply button' (only the 'normal' Reply button can be inferred in
guess what kind of Reply would be most appropriate.
Are you saying that this is indeed what Evolution does? It only has one 'Reply' button that is similar to Thunderbird 'Smart Reply' button?
Only superficially. The point is that both of these MUAs are list-aware and offer options appropriately.
No, the point is you apparently can't simply acknowledge that you mis-spoke/made a mistake.
And in Thunderbird, nothing is 'offered' unless you take some kind of affirmative action (like adding the 'Reply List' button to the toolbar and understanding how it works), then, the only thing that happens is the Reply List button is either available or not, depending on the List headers (and it doesn't work with all lists either)...
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/46f05b3d8ce25ad889788c9d34219727.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Fri, 2015-03-20 at 14:37 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
Tanstaafl, it it will make you happy, I _officially_ acknowledge that I made a mistake/mis-spoke, and I apologize to you, and to anyone else who was confused or annoyed by what I said!
I still think you pretty much missed my point.
Can we move on now?
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On 3/20/2015 2:48 PM, Lindsay Haisley <fmouse@fmp.com> wrote:
We could have moved on 3 posts ago had you simply said 'oops, yeah, I misspoke, here's what I meant', instead of trying to justify it somehow.
I even included a winkie in my first comment pointing out you probably mis-spoke - which, when combined with the rest of the content of my posts, shows conclusively that I did indeed 'get your point'.
And now you compound the problem by making a grand-standing apology obviously meant tongue-in-cheek, in that you don't really mean it, but instead are trying to deflect blame for this ridiculous side-thread back on me.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/46f05b3d8ce25ad889788c9d34219727.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Sun, 2015-03-22 at 11:52 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
Again, I apologize to you, Tanstaafl, and anyone else who found my over-broad assertion off-putting or inappropriate. So, oops, yeah, I misspoke. And my first apology was completely sincere.
I'm making a conscious effort to not make broad assertions and generalizations without providing at least _some_ evidence in support of what I say.
If anyone else wishes to personally take me to task over this, PLEASE do so in personal email. I'll be happy, as always, to field technical critiques on list of _any_ assertions I make, broad or narrow, as I'm sure well everyone else on this list.
Subject closed! Now back to our regularly scheduled program :)
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Richard Damon writes:
I don't understand why they do it this way. If I were writing an MUA, I'd make each addressee a button which replies to them only.[1] For the explicit reply button, I'd automatically put the list-post and author in To:, provide an obvious delete button on each (as Gmail does), and provide an "add other addressees" button in Cc:.
As it happens, on XEmacs lists about half the people who are most likely to end up in "reply-all" cc lists *want* to be cc'd because their filters put general list traffic in a folder they read much less frequently, but replies to their own posts they want to read immediately, so I've never coded it.
It's a very difficult UI/UX problem, I think.
Footnotes: [1] The alternative use for active regions over an addressee would be to provide contact list information, but I would do that in a tooltip.
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On 3/21/2015 12:55 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote:
Way too complicated for me...
I like the 'Smart Reply' button in Thunderbird (just wish I could put it on the main toolbar), but I'd make its behavior configurable:
a) Allow the user to set a global default (ie, if List headers are present, set default to 'Reply To List'), then make this over-ridable somehow on a sender basis (ie, for certain lists, you could change the default to the normal 'Reply' (to sender only)), or
b) allow the user to have it automatically show all relevant reply options simultaneously (ie, side by side, without a drop-down selector), ie: If List headers are available, show 'Reply' and 'Reply To List' buttons, if List headers are available and there are multiple recipients, show all three ('Reply', 'Reply All', and 'Reply To List')
Getting the config options and UI right for this would take a little thought, but I think it would be doable...
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 3/20/2015 8:38 PM, Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> wrote:
Do you mean that you see a single button with a drop-down that provides these three choices?
If so, then you are using the 'Smart Reply' button that I described earlier, that
a) is only available on the preview pane header toolbar, and
b) has to be manually placed there (unless it is now placed there by default automatically, which it wasn't when it was first introduced).
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/46f05b3d8ce25ad889788c9d34219727.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Sun, 2015-03-22 at 11:32 -0400, Tanstaafl wrote:
As of T-bird 31.4.0 for Ubuntu Linux 12.04 the _default_ behavior is to present a "Reply List" button with a drop-down appendage when the index cursor is located on a list post. The when this tab is clicked, a drop-down drop-down menu is attched to this button presents the above listed options. I determined this empirically by deleting T-bird and my user config for it on one of my VMs and reinstalling it from scratch.
Nowhere in the visible UI is "Smart Reply" mentioned, nor is it listed in the preferences menu. This may be a default of the installation rather than of of T-bird itself.
a) is only available on the preview pane header toolbar, and
Yes, this is where it's located.
If I right-click on the preview pane itself (which is separate from the header/button pane) I get a pop-up menu with "Reply to List" on it, regardless of whether or not a post is a list post. If I click on this option for a non-list post I get a reply/composition window with the To address empty. For a list post, this is filled in with the list address by T-bird.
b) has to be manually placed there (unless it is now placed there by default automatically, which it wasn't when it was first introduced).
The "Reply List" button is apparently there by default when a list post is selected. T-bird 31.4.0 is doubtless not the latest version, since the Linux distributions on my VMs is a few years old, so the behavior may have changed since then.
-- Lindsay Haisley | "The only unchanging certainty FMP Computer Services | is the certainty of change" 512-259-1190 | http://www.fmp.com | - Ancient wisdom, all cultures
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On 3/22/2015 12:14 PM, Lindsay Haisley <fmouse@fmp.com> wrote:
If you get into customize mode for that toolbar (right-click on it, customize), you'll see the name of the button is 'Smart Reply'...
But yeah, it looks like it is placed there by default now.
Now, I just wish the button was made available to the main toolbars too.
A couple of years ago, I had opened a bug requesting a new button with the exact same name, then a few months after I opened that bug, I found the one in the message header toolbar (not sure when it was introduced). I then changed my bug to request that the button be available to all toolbars, but it didn't go anywhere. The problem was something about the button icon size changing (it is the last comment)...
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/682b7115267957111b90d648ac5ab780.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Fri, 20 Mar 2015 09:52:19 -0400 Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
Hello Tanstaafl,
Claws-Mail has the option(1) to "reply to list" when the relevant headers are present. Also, mailing list folders can be set up so spurious To's and Cc's are avoided.
(1) Can be (un)set by the user. Most set it to on because, well, why wouldn't you?
-- Regards _ / ) "The blindingly obvious is / _)rad never immediately apparent" Bet you think you're king but you're really a pawn When You're Young - The Jam
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On 3/20/15 8:52 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
Thunderbird. ('Reply to list' for listservs, 'Reply all' if more than one recipient in a non-list conversation)
Others like Gmail will offer 'reply all' if there's more than one recipient.
And what you get when you hit 'reply' will depend on what the list sets as the reply-to address. In Mailman we have the option of setting it to the list address OR the sender. Some of mine go to sender (typically lists whose participants tend to go far off topic frequently), some go to the list.
A couple of quick rules of thumb I use for responses: If I can answer an original question definitively in one or two lines and it's not likely to spark a long thread, I will top post.
Otherwise, I most often use the trim-and-interleave, or if it makes sense (as in this post), bottom posting. In general, follow the convention most used in the list or conversation in question.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/817c7c4c02e4ce175b1d06543263afc1.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lindsay Haisley" <fmouse@fmp.com>
{{citation-needed}}
Thunderbird, Mutt, Zimbra, Outlook and Outlook Express (and descendents) all don't do that. What are "many MUAs"?
Cheers, -- jra
Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274
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T-bird _does_ do this, although it doesn't work exactly as I described. the header/button pane between the index pane and the preview pane contains a "Reply List" button if a list post is is highlighted in the index, otherwise said button is absent. Someone in this discussion said that this isn't default behavior in T-bird, but I can't speak to this. The point is that T-bird is list-aware and can offer reply choices accordingly. So can Evolution, which was the default Gnome MUA until a few years ago. Barry Warsaw told us that Claws Mail has excellent reply-to-list support, and Mark Sapiro said that Mutt offers an "L" command to reply to a list.
Whether (count them!) four MUAs constitute "many MUAs", and whether I'm culpable for a misrepresentation of the facts is a matter of opinion. I already ate a large serving of crow in response to Tanstaafl's taking me to task on the same matter. At the moment I'm not hungry.
The point is that programming list-awareness into an MUA isn't rocket science, and the fact that it's not done in many of them is more a matter of UI designers and their buddies in marketing departments deciding to "simplify" (i.e. dumb down) their MUA products to enhance user experience and avoid confusing and possibly educating their user/customer base.
Sent from the Dehut/Haisley iPad email <household@fmp.com>
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On Fri, 20 Mar 2015, Andrew Stuart wrote:
When I reply to a message on a mailing list, what is the ???right??? way to do it?
Not sure if there is a right way for everybody. Definitely there is a way I like it to happen and ways which I find extremely annoying.
Should I be deleting previous thread text from my response?
For me, yes please do.
Should I be adding anything in?
Your contribution, unless it is "me too" :-)
Talking seriously. I think there are two separate matters. Knowledgeable users may "program" their MUA (or Mail Delivery Agent) to follow their preferences almost in any case. It is more difficult for a list administrator or a poster to force all correspondents to follow a given policy.
One matter is : to whom shall the reply go ?
Here the list administrator has the power to set a preference for the list (reply goes to poster, reply goes to list or eventually even redirect the reply or block it ... the same can occur for a single circular mail with appropriate header tweaking), and the user with a proper MUA should have the capability to reset the preference to what he likes.
In most cases lists are DISCUSSION lists, so in this case MY preference is that the reply shall go to the list ONLY and not ALSO to the poster, Clever list managers properly configured will avoid sending duplicate replyes if sent to the list and to one list member.
I am annoyed when this does not work and I receive two copies, but I just check the message id and remove one redundant copy.
If the list is not configured for reply to list, if it is a list I use rarely I just do Reply All, this will compose the header to send to poster and list, and I remove the poster address.
(and of course there are case in which I WANT to respond privately so I remove the list address)
For lists I use regularly I have configured my Alpine MUA to use a role which replies just to the list.
There are cases of lists for which a reply to the list is unwanted. I remember a technical list on which replies to the posts (which were sort of help requests) were FORBIDDEN, Replies went to the OP, which had the commitment at the end to post a summary. It worked quite nicely because members were disciplined people.
Other cases when a reply is unwanted are circular messages, like conference announcements. This applies also to messages sent to a distribution list (not an exploder). Proper usage of headers like Bcc: or better Lcc: (supported by Alpine) and Reply-To should automatize the fact replies go only to the poster.
The other matter is : top posting, bottom posting, no quoting, trimmed quoting
Here I definitely hate top posting, but I am also annoyed by the fact that people quote entire messages, and so by the fact I will save to a folder many copies of redundant text I already had in the previous message.
In this case I have instructed my mail delivery agent (procmail) to filter out the unwanted stuff (since I could not educate my correspondents) http://sax.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/Procmail/noquotenohtml.html
So my preference is to either reply with my contribution, or trim the original text to the parts I want to reply, and interleave my answers. This very message is an example
(to do multiply interleaving, i.e. reply to more posters, I have to pass via an external clipboard)
On Thu, 19 Mar 2015, Mark Sapiro wrote:
I do agree that sending copy of a full correspondence is rarely a case for a mailing list, unless perhaps one wants to inform a new subscriber of past correspondence
If the mailing list supports archiving, the easiest way to do it is to refer the new subscriber to the archives.
If one wants instead to inform a new team member of past correspondence exchanged with other recipients outside of a mailing list, a nice way is to forward him a MIME digest of all past messages (with Alpine one can easily select a block of messages and Apply Forward ... one can also unpack a digest into a folder, but that's more tricky)
--
Lucio Chiappetti - INAF/IASF - via Bassini 15 - I-20133 Milano (Italy) For more info : http://www.iasf-milano.inaf.it/~lucio/personal.html
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participants (31)
-
Adam McGreggor
-
Al Black
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Andrew Stuart
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Barry Warsaw
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Bernd Petrovitsch
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Bill Christensen
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Brad Rogers
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Carl Zwanzig
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Danil Smirnov
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David Andrews
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David Benfell
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Dean Suhr
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J.B. Nicholson-Owens
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Jay Ashworth
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JB
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jdd
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Larry Kuenning
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Lindsay Haisley
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Lucio Chiappetti
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Mark Sapiro
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Matthew Needham
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Mike Starr
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Peter Shute
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Richard Damon
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Robert Heller
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Stephen J. Turnbull
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Steve Lindemann
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Steven D'Aprano
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Tanstaafl
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Thomas Gramstad
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William Bagwell