On 2017-04-17 06:35:-0500, Ken wrote:

If its at the end, why not just quit reading after you have read the latest response?

It’s not that simple—though I wish it was. Conversation are fluid, some people quote full blocks and interleave their comments and trim, while others hit reply without selecting anything which by default will place the cursor above the entire email they’re replying to with all the sigs at each end of all text underneath rather than this interwoven style. Each email, I have to “hop” down to look for new content and screen carefully that I don’t miss something.

Switch to a daily digest for a few days, and you can see what I see.

On Apr 17, 2017, at 12:00 PM, Rich Messeder wrote:

At any rate, I support emails courtesies, and though I appreciate that there may be more programming on the mail list end to remove all the repeated footers, I support that, too. OTOH, >>> if responders simply select the part of the message they are responding to, and reply, then the earlier footers are gone. Problem solved, at the cost of a few seconds on behalf of each sender. And, I opine, a good email habit to have, anyway.

Though it may not be relevant for this list --- I have not paid attention, partly because there is so much fog in each thread here --- I often get emails that are replies that also include the attachment sent with the original post, and all because the sender simply hit reply or reply all.

I think we’re on the same wavelength. I try to keep things simple & only quote what’s needed—thus my list member suggestion (#2: highlight & respond to small chunks) that was after the more scripting intensive #1 suggestion. I do not want to leave the list because I can find out about new features and see issues as they develop. However, simple troubleshooting can create a lot of noise that forces me to skim some digests. I don’t want to curtail anyone’s freedom of expression either—some of the .sigs still crack me up. Unfortunately, short of setting up a phpBB bulletin board for developments, troubleshooting/help along with this channel I see no way around these long chains.

BTW, some daily digests contain 20+ emails with complete threads repeated each time which can make for 30+ pages of scrolling. If you want to see it, switch to digest & wait for a busy day (or just copy a full day’s worth of emails into one long text document. I recall one week where I was interested in a thread about support for a new radio, but I gave up trying to follow it after a day or two of it popping up with increasingly long emails.

Either way, the noise (or “fog”) actually discourages me from following things here closer—but it’s not like most people have a ton of free time anyway. :)

Thanks,

M