Quoting in Emails? 61
Shanes asks: "I want to know how slashdot readers feel about the
IMO ever worse quoting habits of people writing mails. When I started
writing emails to friends and colleagues over 10 years ago I and
everyone else quickly learned how
to quote. These days most of the bytes in my inbox are "Original Message" quotes that
Outlook people always include at the end of every mail. Doesn't anyone care about sending well
edited mails anymore?" I have a simple rule, if I can't read it
without editing it first, it's probably not worth my time. Do any
of you get frustrated by the formatting of email in your inbox?
Sorry, but no. (Score:1, Troll)
No.
Our whole company uses outlook. Everybody uses the default quoting system
Yes, they do.
--- original message ---
from : Bob
subject : v. important
Do the widgets work?
-- original message --
from : Boris
subject : v.important
Got any questions about the widgets?
That works for me
1) The most important information is at the top.
2) I can archive a single mail and have saved the whole discussion.
Re:Sorry, but no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, if your emails are only one sentence long this method works great but if your replying to mutliple questions/points/etc, quoting parts and replying to each works much better.
Judging by the use of quotes here, most slashdot readers agree with me.
2) I can archive a single mail and have saved the whole discussion.
Sure, if your only interacting if one other person, but what if two people reply to you at the same time?
Re:Sorry, but no. (Score:3, Insightful)
[Why Default Outlook Reply is Good]
> I can archive a single mail and have saved the whole discussion.
I would have to disagree with your point #2. Our whole office uses the Outlook and the majority of them use the default reply method ( 99.9 % ). The biggest complaint I have is when I am forwarded or copied on an email discussion after several emails have been sent. I am forced to scroll through 5 to 10 pages of pure crap and headers trying to figure what the heck the whole thing is about.
For lengthy emails I generally use many of the practices outlined in the article, but I do have to confess for short communications between only one person I use the default the method. I can also say that I have been complimented on a reply that I took the time edit and breakdown in a very concise manner. So people do pay attention to this point.
Re:Sorry, but no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sorry, but no. (Score:1)
Or if you can trust that the person you're conversiong don't even know that they could edit this 'single message archive', which is fairly rare with ppl who don't know how to quote.
Re:Sorry, but no. (Score:3, Funny)
Yours truly,
L.E.T. Hacker, MSCE
Re:Sorry, but no. (Score:1)
Well posted email, threaded properly is much better and historically accurate then one single message. Go the step further, digitally sign your documents, then you will have the best, most usable archive.
just my
Re:Sorry, but no. (Score:2, Insightful)
Uhm, I hit the lameness filter on a simple HTML formatted message for the sake of an example list? WTF is the point of allowing HTML if you filter like that? Especially when it allows this mess of 's, pipes and hyphens. Sigh
Except it has no frame of reference; to find out what you're replying to you have to jump to the bottom and find the reply, read it, work out what specific part you're replying to and then read your response again.
Um, no you can't. Threads aren't usually like:
| Bla Wibble Wobble Wa\--| Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
\-- Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
They're:
| Bla Wibble Wobble Wa|--| Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
|\--| Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
|\-- Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
|--| Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
|\--| Foo (was: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa)
|\-- Re: Foo
\-- Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
How do ypu propose to archive all those with a single message, even assuming you can trust every user to use the same reply method and not ever even concider changing anything?
The standard method of quoting; i.e, quoting as little as needed, replying in-context etc, results in shorter more structured messages that are easier to read and contain a minimum of redundant data. It also scales much better; when you're 20 replies deep in a thread, where your messages are hitting 200k with every previous message still in there, proper quoting is still just leaving the relevent information in there.
If you need to archive threads, you should save the entire thread out to an mbox, not pick one untrusted message and hope the thread is structured enough to all be contained in it.
News groups (Score:1)
> They're:
> | Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
> |--| Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
> | \--| Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
> | \-- Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
> |--| Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
> | \--| Foo (was: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa)
> | \-- Re: Foo
> \-- Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
This highlights the problem that Email is not really the best medium for threaded discussions involving more than two people, whereas news groups are designed with exactly this in mind.
However convincing people to actually _use_ news groups is very difficult, as people don't seem to have the client software (well, for windows users Outlook Express is O.K, but for corporate users, there is no real integration of news groups in Outlook), specifically ones that give notifications of new messages arriving in threads of interest in the same way as Email notifications work.
In my previous job I tried very hard to encourage people to use internal news groups, especially for those "has anybody (fwd'd to 10 people) got any comments on this 30 page document" type messages, with not much success (not total failure, but not much success either: bizarrely the one area where it did work was in a group for each person to submit a weekly status report, even though they stimulated very little (or no) correspondance)
As an aside, the next problem after that for that case is actually getting authors to make the corrections that are suggested, my only solution to which has been to force people to put documents in CVS instead, prefereably as HTML, rather than binary /
Other than that, the only other problem with using news groups that I can think of is that the users cannot select an arbitrary list of receipients (it is fixed on a per-group basis, making administration a bit awkward)
Edmund.
Sorry about all the parenthesis, I fear I have a hidden desire for Lisp.
Re:News groups (Score:1)
> really the best medium for threaded discussions
> involving more than two people, whereas news
> groups are designed with exactly this in mind.
Mailing lists are fine, aside from being more complex to join/leave. Mass-Ccing and group replies are also handy for small discussions between a few people, but you're right; for internal stuff, a private news setup's a good alternative. I have always been surprised at the lack of good Win32 news software to the tune of NewsRog though.
Mixing the two might be the best compromise; have a news server for those who want to use it, and have a mail news gateway with a list.
> As an aside, the next problem after that for
> that case is actually getting authors to make
> the corrections that are suggested, my only
> solution to which has been to force people to
> put documents in CVS instead, prefereably as
> HTML, rather than binary /
WebDAV/SubVersion might be a good way to go in future, especially since you can mount WebDAV shares directly in Explorer (I gather Macs have good WebDAV support too).
HTML, though, *cringe*, make them use a proper descriptive XML format that you can turn into anything with a quick XSL
a resounding yes--people r stupid & inconsider (Score:2, Insightful)
The worst has to be when you send a long email to somebody, and it makes it way back to you with the original message and "YES!!!!!!!!" at the top, but let's not talk about top-posting in email.
Re:a resounding yes--people r stupid & inconsi (Score:3, Insightful)
And it's even better when they put the "YES!!!!" right at the bottom, so you have to scroll past your own message to see a single word of theirs!
Re:a resounding yes--people r stupid & inconsi (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, it is, assuming they are in possession of half an ounce of intelligence, in which case they will quote only the specific question you asked (to which they are replying with "YES!!!!").
Chances are the question you asked is short enough (when properly quoted) that both it and the response will be visible immediately, without the need for any scrolling.
Re:a resounding yes--people r stupid & inconsi (Score:2)
I'd like to disagree -- the person probably does *not* remember exactly what they wrote. At least that's the way it is with me, and when someone replies with something like "Yes, I think you were right", I usually don't know what I had originally said.
Trimming too much is bad for comprehension; you should keep enough quoted material to establish context, IMO.
Re:a resounding yes--people r stupid & inconsi (Score:2)
No, worse than that is when you get a digest of a mailing list, which includes full quoting *seven* levels deep (and six, and five, and four (the three, two and one level mails being in the previous digest)), every one of them incuding the signature automatically added by the list manager say "please remember to trim quoted text".
And worse than that is over 300 lines of Word generated style sheet in a mangled HTMLized mail to say "Me too" (plus full quote). And when you complain someone else says "I don't see that here, the problem must be your mail client reading it".
Re:a resounding yes--people r stupid & inconsi (Score:1)
Sometimes I wonder what will become of us bald apes. It seems to me, from observation, that most of us are almost hardwired to be selfish and to cling to our ignorance and parochialism as if they were virtues.
Re:Spellcheck is an option. (Score:1, Offtopic)
Formatting (Score:2, Funny)
Yes, poorly formatted emails suck, it takes forever to find just where to click to get to that "FREE PORN!!! NO CREDIT CARD NEEDED!!!!!" site.
Re:Formatting (Score:1)
me too :) (Score:2, Funny)
Unfortunately... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:2, Interesting)
I see the entire topic mainly from an Usenet-Perspective. Usenet is a bit better in this respect. The three groups I read frequently have almost consistent quoting style, others I read every now and then have not so great, but still good quoting habbits. It seems that the more technical a discussion gets, the better the quoting gets.
And should you ever read the LKML archive [theaimsgroup.com] you'll find that although you'll find 'Outlook default quotings' none of the gurus use it
Re:Unfortunately... (Score:1)
Quoting legal lines (Score:2, Interesting)
Our company uses Outlook. Outlook has an option to include signatures in replys and forwards.
Where this gets really nasty is when (as we do), you have a company standard signature, Name, title, phone, 4 URLs, plus a 10 line legal disclaimer.
This is one of my pet peeves at work, having to scroll down 2 pages because you just got an email with....
Yes, it does
Followed by 17 lines of signature and you can't see the original message.
I think the folks at my company take themselves a little too seriously....
Re:Quoting legal lines (Score:1)
I love the great signtures -- of course at the bottom of emails -- which claim that if I am not the intended recipient of the email, I am legally obliged not to read it.
It just seems that such information should come a bit sooner...
Re:Quoting legal lines (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A bigger problem -- HTML Email (Score:1)
Just sad.
I too wish that there was on option in Outlook to only view messages as plaintext. If that means that all HTML tags are printed, so be it.
A slashdot moderator complains about poor editing? (Score:1)
Perception is the Problem (Score:2)
Re:Perception is the Problem (Score:1)
Newbie users. newbie vendors (Score:2)
Etc. I tried to fight this by cutting & pasting my messages so that they'd be top-quoted -- The Way The Good Lord Intended -- but it was much too much of a pain in the ass, and being the only one in the company doing it just made me look funny. Likewise my selection of a monospace font -- it was like tilting at windmills.
Yes, it's sad that not everyone has been brought into the culture in such a way that old netiquette would be honored, but that's just how it works when a subculture gets promoted to the mainstream. Yes, Microsoft could have made it easier to configure Outlook -- and to be fair, Outlook Express *is* a nice email client on the Mac (I just wasn't allowed to use it), and newer versions than this one ('98?) might be more flexible) -- and there's really no defence for their wholesale scuttling of all but their way of quoting messages. But what's done is done: as long as I can keep using Pine or Mutt, and read most of the mail coming to me, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. Times have moved on...
Re:Newbie users. newbie vendors - IMAP is good (Score:1)
One could also use Mutt with IMAP if your exchange admins will allow IMAP.
xrayspx
Patiently waiting for Pronto! IMAP support.
Re:Newbie users. newbie vendors - IMAP is good (Score:2)
This is how the organization worked and it wasn't my place to change their ways.
Now if they wanted to hire me permanently, and I had the patience to carve out a niche in which my more oldschool ways would work, that might be one thing. But I lacked the time and I lacked the will, and I would suggest that most people don't have the time or will to change something like this. If that's how the organization has chosen to work, then you really have little choice but to go along with it or work towards slow, stubbornly resisted change. C'est la vie...
How about an opposite POV? (Score:3, Insightful)
What I find value in is being able to go back in the thread and see the line of discussion, and why someone is asking me a question, and from what angle they're looking at it. In other words, it gives me the background and frame of reference that makes it easier to respond. And I only have to go back as far as I need (agreed that the most relevant information is towards the top, but sometimes it can be at the very bottom -- like a Director asking a question).
Email, by far, is a 'lazy' medium. (Heck, they even have spell checkers built in.) However, there are worse ways to communicate. In the office, instant messenging has dropped to the lowest common denominator of communication. I've dropped down to using one letter replies like 'y' (yes), 'n' (no), 'k' (okay).
Re:How about an opposite POV? (Score:2)
Its all about something that is easy to digest and quote. What I see is that compulsory education^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hlearning should be enforced so communication skills could be introduced to everyone. Learning by osmosis doesn't seem to work.
come on, you can figure it out (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Quoting Practices (Score:1)
The current "inclusion convention" for email is just to do whatever my mail program wants, normally "stick my reply over the quoted text". This results in huge messages, often with 10 or 20 quoted messages under them which bear little or no relevance to the current line of discussion.
The end result for me is long, confusing email that eats space on my mail server (I'm an IMAP user).
In most cases I advocate the FIRST quoting style described in the jargon file [tuxedo.org] - it makes the most sense for any email over 10 lines. It makes the most sense when reading over the email and it is the style I myself use. Additionally, I berate people frequently for not trimming off irrelevant stuff from their messages - If something is 6 levels back and hasn't been replied to chances are it wont spark discussion on the 7th mail.
This has been my theraputic rant for the day
I thought the point of Ask Slashdot... (Score:4, Insightful)
What on earth is a little bitchfest doing here? There isn't even anything to respond to in the question (besides "yes, I do quote properly" or "no, I don't quote properly.")
- A.P.
Me too? (Score:5, Funny)
-----Original Message-----
From: cliff@slashdot.org
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 06:45:01 +0000
Subject: Quoting in Emails?
Shanes asks: "I want to know how slashdot readers feel about the IMO
ever worse quoting habits of people writing mails. When I started writing
emails to friends and colleagues over 10 years ago I and everyone else
quickly learned how to quote. These days most of the bytes in my inbox are
"Original Message" quotes that Outlook people always include at the end of
every mail. Doesn't anyone care about sending well edited mails
anymore?" I have a simple rule, if I can't read it without editing it
first, it's probably not worth my time. Do any of you get frustrated by
the formatting of email in your inbox?
frustration with LotusNotes (Score:1)
An example is Lotus Notes. It has lots of nifty functions, but its Reply and Forward functions leave a whole lot to be desired. To include an original message in a reply or forward, the whole thing is appended at the end, as with other text-based software. But the original is not quoted out, simply separated from the expected typing space at the top by the header. Furthermore, this header is a whitespace-heavy mess which you don't see in Lotus Notes, but can clearly see in text-based readers. Even more: you can't change your line length (fixed at 72), so you can't reduce the possibility of mis-wrapped text.
To avoid creating unnecessarily large reply messages, I'll just copy the whole message to the clipboard, and add all the quote prefixes. It's a lot of work, so maybe it's a good thing: it encourages me, and conscientious writers, to trim posts heavily. Unfortunately, it really encourages huge messages or messages with no quoted text at all!
In all, it makes me embarrassed to reply to people who are not using Lotus Notes.
I agree, but not really. (-: (Score:2)
old? yes.
from the site:
> I have a 10 Gig disk - don't you?
Let's face it. Email etiquette is a niche. Same as websites that don't require graphics and/or plugins and/or javascript are a niche.
Some days it bugs me. Some days I don't care about it. This is not your father's "net" (-:
Nope! It's contagious. (Score:3, Insightful)
One could make the same argument about any etiquette. And in some cases, like proper pinky placement while tea-sipping, the etiquette really is a niche, because the etiquette goes with something that is itself a niche. But that's not the case with email, which is rapidly becoming universal.
Any reasonable etiquette standard, from editing your email to not using your cellphone during a movie to not slurping your soup, is about consideration for others, about trading a little effort on your part for some benefit to those you deal with. To develop a taste for manners, all you need is the chance to regularly experience both sides of the behavior. A daily shower seems like an unnecessary nuisance until you sit next to somebody who bathes monthly.
Ever since the September that never ended [tuxedo.org], the Internet has been flooded with relative newbies. Newbies anywhere are notoriously short on manners. But the percentage of new people on the Internet has probably peaked already, so we should soon see some collective progress.
Certainly, I've seen signs of it. I've stopped receiving "send a card to tumorous Timmy" forward hoaxes; all my correspondents have passed that stage. And I've seen progress in the real world, too; during the last three movies I've attended, I haven't had to kill a single person for cellphone use.
And so it will go with quoting. A well-formatted message is more pleasant to read and easier to understand; those who want to communicate well will take the extra time. And those who don't catch on will look like dolts.
Re:I agree, but not really. (-: (Score:2)
So is writing good English, but the smart guys all do it...
Are there any open source MSExchange clients? (Score:2, Informative)