Re: [IRCA] WebTV users...

["Rick Lewis" <ricklew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

my take as a blind person is that it takes me much longer to read email 
replies containing quoted text than ones that don't.
Screen readers will generally read everything, even with greater-than signs 
preceding the line.
Thus I much prefer the snippet at the bottom of the message, since I only 
have it available when I need it.
 (Yes, I can hear the howls of protest about context already!)
But context can be offered to those who need it without quoting entire 
messages.
The problem is that most people don't delete any text, instead of taking the 
time to either snip out the irrelevant stuff or just write an explanatory 
sentence or two recapping what they're referring to.
Example;

 "Bob Fenmore's statement that engineers always have the time to verify QSL 
reports is something I must take issue with."

That lays out the context so that the snippet isn't necessary at all.
Or, rather than quoting the entire message, even this isn't obtrusive as the 
top line:

Bob Fenmore wrote:
>>I have time to verify all QSL reports, and I'm an engineer, so that must 
>>be true for other engineers, too.

That's realy a snippet and quickly provides context clues.

A situation where mixed quoting can be useful is if you're discussing one or 
several posts point by point. That way the point being referred to is 
quoted, and can give context without clutter.
It only takes a few seconds of cutting and pasting to ensure that minimal 
quoting offers enough info for memory-jogging but no more. You'd be 
surprised how often folks resend long messages or even entire threads just 
to write one or two lines at the bottom of their message. It may take me 20 
seconds to wade through the quotes and four seconds to read their thoughts. 
There are shortcuts for doing this, and they're useful, but no substitute 
for changing colors or scanning lines for the first one without the > 
(greater-than) sign.
I think I'm a pretty efficient mail user, but it takes me a couple of hours 
a day to go through my new messages
(less if my Braille display were up and running.)
I suspect that at Least one-third of
that time is spent wading through quotes. In other words, I spend more time 
dealing with unnecessary quoting than it would take for the original posters 
to delete it. I don't expect most folks to change their habits because I'm 
expressing my opinion here, but I felt it was worth saying.
 --
Rick
 

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