On Sep 22, 2010, at 9:26 AM, Jari Arkko wrote: > Dave, > >> The primary argument in favour of inline responses is that they allow context to be retained. > > Yes. Context is essential to understanding why a comment is being made. For instance, the poster may support or disagree with a particular assertion expressed earlier in the discussion. > > However, sometimes I see posters on some lists fall back on a simpler form of retaining context, where the unabridged discussion history gets quoted on all new messages. I don't know if we slip into this mode out of convenience or because we somehow assume that the other readers (and their mail tools) on the list are stateless and have no memory of past events. My theory is that email user agents have somehow, overall, become less functional over time in allowing people to quote portions of previous messages and insert new text into such quoted messages. I think this actually got worse when it became conventional to compose messages (and quote replies) in HTML. Keith _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf