Re: the evils of quoting

On 3-feb-04, at 18:06, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:

>> This is evil. Too bad you can't shoot people who do this.

> who set you up as the arbiter of appropriate behavior on the internet?

> Users create an email in a way that's comfortable for them. It's their 
> email. it's their computer.

But I have to read it, that's the problem.

> who are you (or any of us) to demand how they do things to our 
> convenience and preferences?

It's a simple question of common courtesy and - sense. Inconveniencing 
(many) others in order to save a few keystrokes is not a nice thing to 
do. And it makes no sense: what's the use of repeating the message that 
is being replied to _after_ the reply? Either the reader wanted to see 
the quote but then obviously _before_ reading the reply, or the reader 
isn't interested in the old text anyway. In either case, no need to 
repeat it, especially not in full.

10 years ago just about everyone did this right but these stupid 
newbies that think the internet was created just for them seem to think 
they know everything better. (Also: "No, I type just as fast with two 
fingers, why would I have to learn to touch type?" or "But I _like_ 
formatting my letters using the space bar!") And unfortunately many 
people who know better don't bother doing it right anymore.

Just two quick additional remarks:

1. Header values don't have to span multiple lines and where necessary 
special characters can be escaped.
2. Obviously a mailng system isn't going to support windows 1252 or ibm 
439 or what have you: everything that's not 7 bit ascii must be 
unicode.