> > on other forums I'm on they merely delete the entire last message and type away with their own stuff. The whole reason I brought this up is because I want to know why you guys write replies this way, and if you always did. I'm intrigued.
> >
> > Qua "has nothing better to do than closely inspect message forum replies" rtz
> > ~~*Q*~~
>
> This is how it was always done, back in the infancy of usenet*. To assist the reader's recollections of what was said, there would be a quoted part signified by a > (or |) and the new poster would reply underneath the quoted part.
>
> However, with the onset of Outlook and Outlook Express, you have people replying before the quoted part (or rather, the original message). This caused people to read the new stuff first and, on a long string of messages, old orignal messages would be stacked underneath, never to be read.
>
> Most likely, the ones who delete the whole postings are used to almost instantaneous replies to messages or they assume that if you've gone this far into a message thread you have already read the messages and don't need a recap.
>
> I prefer the old way -- although it seems like I spend all my time at this message board, I don't. It's nice to know what's being referenced.
>
> It also avoids a sense of superiority. If I didn't quote you, it would imply that I don't feel that what you said was important -- here is what I say, and that's what you need to hear. By keeping something of what you said, I'm replying to you; it's a dialogue.
>
> -Faux "*by infancy of usenet, I'm talking about 1990, when there were about 2000 usenet newsgroups. rec.arts.comics would get something like a whopping 250 posts a day." Pas


Well said. Sam would probably agree with you that the " > (or |) quotable text" part is there to help maintain continuity of dialogue, especially since we Rinkies like replying to Forum thread dialogues over two years old. :-) I suppose the fact that Sam and some of us frequently use > even in our emails shows our predilectory bias for the USENET format of reply. Say! Is it possible that this shows our age?... Or no, perhaps we are simply showcasing our sophisticated and utterly seasoned familiarity with the various genteel forms of historical Internet communication. Yes, I'm sure of the latter.

Wolf "who's an old fogey remembers fourteen years ago when there were only 7358 newsgroups available on Usenet; four years later, that number had doubled. No idea what it is today..." spirit