On Fri, 25 Aug 2017 00:35:13 +0200
Svante Signell <svante.signell@???> wrote:


> Hi Edward,
>
> Can you please quote the relevant parts of the mail you are replying
> to, especially the name of the person who sent that mail. Please ;)

Yes! And I wish everybody would do what Svante says. And it's not just
Edward, by any means.

To take it a step further, for gosh sakes, write for clarity. Quote
what's relevant to your reply, including what person said it, and
delete all quoted material not relevant to your reply. If you're
interleave posting, please please PLEASE delete all quoted text below
your final response so readers don't waste time looking for yet another
of your responses.

Interleave posting can increase clarity and reduce the need for you to
be microscopically explicit. Use it! If you simply must print one
massive reply at the very bottom, please be sure to be explicit about
what each and every one of your points refers to, and please delete
all quoted text not related to your reply.

And for those of you who insist on top-posting, which breaks long
many-poster sequences of very clear interleave posting, please at least
have the decency not to use words like "it", "them", "him", but instead
write out the whole concept, as in "the /etc/runit directory", "the
services started by runit", or "Peter Johnson", respectively. Who
wants to parse the entire bottom of an email trying to find out what
someone meant by "it", "them" or "him"? And please remember, top-posting
does not excuse you from deleting irrelevant quoted text while leaving
relevant quoted text in place.

Top-posting with no quoted text deletion is outstanding for business
transactions intended to be a contemporaneous log of what happened
(CYA, in other words). But it's a discussion-muddling obfuscation in a
multi-person brainstorming session, which is what we're supposed to
have on technical mailing lists.

Thanks,

SteveT