|
|
|
|
|
|
|
used to post articles that would begin with, or even consist entirely of, "No, that's wrong" or "I agree" or the like. It was hard to see who was responding to what. Consequently, around 1984, new news-posting software evolved a facility to automatically include the text of a previous article, marked with ">" or whatever the poster chose. The poster was expected to delete all but the relevant lines. The result has been that, now, careless posters post articles containing the entire text of a preceding article, followed only by "No, that's wrong" or "I agree''. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Many people feel that this cure is worse than the original disease, and there soon appeared newsreader software designed to let the reader skip over included text if desired. Today, some posting software rejects articles containing too high a proportion of lines beginning with '>' but this too has led to undesirable workarounds, such as the deliberate inclusion of zerocontent filler lines which aren't quoted and thus pull the message below the rejection threshold. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Because the default mailers supplied with Unix and other operating systems haven't evolved as quickly as human usage, the older conventions using a leading TAB or three or four spaces are still alive; however, >-inclusion is now clearly the prevalent form in both netnews and mail. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Inclusion practice is still evolving, and disputes over the 'correct' inclusion style occasionally lead to holy wars. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Most netters view an inclusion as a promise that comment on it will immediately follow. The preferred, conversational style looks like this, |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
> relevant excerpt 1
response to excerpt
> relevant excerpt 2
response to excerpt
> relevant excerpt 3
response to excerpt |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
or for short messages like this: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
> entire message
response to message |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Thanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents, one will occasionally see the entire quoted message after the response, like this |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
response to message
>entire message |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
but this practice is strongly deprecated. |
|
|
|
|
|