E-mail conventions (was: Re: [plug] Debian VS Mandrake)

[James Devenish]

In message <1086437645.3794.96.camel at Ultima>
on Sat, Jun 05, 2004 at 08:14:05PM +0800, Brock Woolf wrote:
> > And here's one more bit of advice... :-) When you quote, I think you
> > should ensure that the name of the original author is retained
> Well in the future, maybe you should go back and read the previous
> email. This may solve your problem.

LOL ;) But, seriously, although I understand the point you are trying to
make, 'attribution' is a widespread convention throughout e-mail and
newsgroups for very good reasons. Even within the scope of your remark,
can you define what is meant by 'the previous e-mail'? Do you mean
'previous' in date order or in threading order? While it might be true
that fastidiously only quote one previous author and carefully ensure
your posts are threaded to that author's relevant post, having a habit
of retaining attributions may save us from confusion one day. For
instance, some of us do the following things that make attribution
necessary:

 - Use nested quotations (i.e. quote more than one previous author). In
   this case, it becomes non-trivial to find out whose 'previous post'
   the text came from.
 - There is at least one person on this list who responds to text that
   was written several e-mails ago, yet he threads his post to the
   latest e-mail in date order.

So, attribution is "not just for appearances", it's "good practice" too.