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

[Brock Woolf]

On Sat, 2004-06-05 at 20:38, James Devenish wrote:
> 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.

Alright Jamesy boy, i think we understand each other. The "nested
quotations, original author" etc comments are Ok by me.

By the way, on the line up the top where you put:
<1086437645.3794.96.camel at Ultima>
How did you find this, and what is it???
Is it the Message-ID thing you were talking about? (Notice i dropped the
"generate" word this time)

And since you are a self-proclaimed holy grail of information, do you
know anything about PGP-Signing on emails?
Such as why do it and how to do it?