[ATM] Quoting in list messages

[mdholm at telerama.com (Mark Holm)]

Many of the current email programs default to quoting the whole message 
when you click the reply button.  For a list, this is usually not needed 
and not really polite.  If you are replying to a specific part of a 
previous message, it is fine to excerpt just that part, so your message 
will have context, but usually it is not necessary to quote the whole 
preceding message.

When the automatic quoting is carried over a few message cycles, the 
resulting messages get to be quite long.

Several of our list members get their internet access through rather 
thin wires (slow data rates).  It really isn't polite to make them 
download multiple copies of the same text just because you are too lazy 
to edit your messages down.

Outside the USA, it is not uncommon for people to have to pay a volume 
charge for their internet access.  The longer the messages are, the more 
they pay.  We have quite a few list members outside the USA.  It costs 
them extra every time you leave a whole quoted message in your reply.

You can either leave the automatic quoting on, and edit the quotes down 
by hand, or turn it off in your program's settings and manually copy the 
parts you really want to quote.

Thanks,

Mark Holm
mdholm@telerama.com