> Olin Lathrop embedinc.com> writes: >> There is no easy mechanism for skimming the prior thread. =A0Things don'= t show >> up ... Not meaning to be rude (I can manage that well enough unintentionally on occasion) BUT a fair bit of what you complain about in most such cases like this one, and you do it ongoingly, seems to be due to a major deficiency in the functionality / feature set of your email client. I don't know what view it gives you, and I'm not an expert in such things, but the three systems / clients I'm most used to handle this functionality "as of right" and with no effort on the part of the user. Your "problem" seems to be as much in the insistence that what people post should match exactly with what you expect as with what they actually do. Note that I agree very substantially with what you say about the desirability of trimming, adding enough context to allow past history to be seen, bottom posting being often "better" etc, BUT in the absence of most of this (trimming is not an issue here), I and most others require absolutely no effort to deal with the sort of message that we are talking about here - the client provides the minimal amount of functionality necessary to make the deficiencies, real or imagined, not only unimportant but wholly irrelevant to us but wholly unimportant. I'm aware that this doesn't change the basic desirability of doing things "correctly" or well, but it makes your insistence on it look quaint or nit-picking or pedantic. (It's my job to be the pedant around here). Our NZ road rules require eg that a vehicle always be able to stop in half the clear roadway available. It is no effort at all for me NOT to expect that other people obey this law. I drive at all times with the assumption that they don't. If I did demand that they comply, I might be able to convince the small claims court on multiple occasions that the resultant accidents were their fault, as they technically would often be, but odds are that I'd all too soon be explaining my pedantry to St Peter, (or worse :-) ). If you used eg GMail or Outlook or Outlook Express or the utterly horrible web mail provided by my ISP, or probably 95% of the commercial clients available, the current issue wouldn't be one. With these the recent prior messages are visible either in threaded form or so close and accessible in a list that reading them in order is not only trivially easy but the overwhelmingly obvious and intelligent thing to do. Standing on ceremony and demanding that people's mail MUST suit your RFC compliant client and proper netiquette, when it is an utter non issue when most clients are used, borders on the apparently quaint and quirky, and ongoing rude insistence at each first instance of "non compliance" thus attracts far more attention than you may otherwise expect. If your client worked "properly" OR you started in in a polite manner odds, are it would usually be a non issue for all. In the absence of both a glitch free logical AND produces the guaranteed result. The 'community' works when we all bend a little. Doing everything utterly right always, would work well enough if we all did it. And if a given list member always did everything "perfectly" then it may be harder to complain when they insisted that others must also be 'perfect'. But nobody on list that I'm aware of always does things 100% correctly, which makes standing on ceremony on points which MAY be technically correct but which are rendered far far less important by technology freely available to all, especially if accompanied by rude and/or loud insistence, a bit annoying [tm] to their fellow less than perfect list members. Attitude and email-client choice may, perhaps, be constitutionally guaranteed rights. But in areal world fixing the client or forgoing ones 'rights' just a little probably works better. most times anyway ;-). Russell PS: Use of "Duh" in most sentences in most cases is liable produce a result in the mind of he hearer out of all proportion to the effort taken to write it. This may produce vast value for effort if you value the scattergun effect, but is liable to "have consequences" which are less controlled than is usually useful. If you aren't happy with the way that most people act you should get over it. (3 words as opposed to 3 letters - less value per effort :-) ). .. --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .