On Wednesday, December 08, 2010 10:03:26 am Scott Robbins wrote: > I remember in an effort to get a life outside tech, I joined a mailing > list for something else. I hadn't realized how most people top post, > don't trim, and still use aol. Lots of corporate people top post to retain the threading, and get rather upset when you trim the replies below, since they aren't using MUA's that can thread. Not to mention that top-posting is the default reply setup for the most commonly used corporate-type MUA's. I often use 'standard' netiquette in replying, and have had a few cases there the recipient had never seen that, and it confused the daylights out of them. And they want the reply thread to be in-message (again, since they're not using a threaded MUA). Or in the case of Outlook 2003 or later, they've never used 'Arrange by Conversation' and don't realize how useful that can be (Outlook 2010 I've heard greatly improves things). We use Scalix here as our MTA and web-based MUA, and the web MUA doesn't thread. The primary purpose is for being a groupware backend to MS Outlook; 'Arrange by Conversation' isn't used a whole lot. I keep getting asked 'why don't you use a real mailreader like Outlook?' and I then show them the volume of e-mail I get, and the features of Kmail that I use heavily that Outlook simply does not have, or doesn't do as well. They typically still don't get it; threading confuses many people who have never used it. Likewise for the common and irritating practice of using 'Reply' as a shortcut to sending a new post, especially to a mailing list. If your MUA is not threaded, you simply don't see a problem with the practice. Mine is, I do, and I don't do that. :-)