Hahaa. Or when the request sensitive email for access to a secure station, and turn around and include that email in the forward email chain to the entire construction company about site access. Guy got fired and I got free identity protection insurance because of that.

I think it would depend on the infraction. If it were an outside e-mail address, sending crappy memes or useless rumors already debunked by Snopes, too many spam-bots or deceptive e-mail add-ins scrub for those e-mail addresses. (Spreading crappy memes or rumors should have its own punishment in and of itself.)

If you're planning a party though, it's nice to know who else may be potentially coming, so you can either attend (or avoid depending upon the situation). It's also good if you can add contacts to your e-mail for people whom you've not received contact information from.... it could be a good or bad thing.

I would also simply suggest using BCC when sending around a mass e-mail, because there are too many dolts with less than intelligent replies who immediately go for the "reply all" button.
Feels like I'm stepping into the Twilight Zone.

This place is a madhouse, feels like being home.
Just Google "Hillary Clinton, e-mail server".

ERRRRRRRRRR! WRONG! :P

This place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned

That's what I get for Googling the lyrics.... at least two different sites would disagree with you.... sure it isn't one of those "misheard lyrics"?

[edit]... actually, looking at the lyrics on Google play, it looks like both are used in two different refrains.... "This is a madhouse, feels like being home" (slightly different) never noticed that before!

If the previous e-mail is short, it makes sense to include the entire text in it. If it is long, you should still include enough of the previous e-mail to give context.

This also applies to the forums here as well. One pet peeve of mine is when another user includes a quote but cuts out all the text, removing context and making it impossible to tell which post it was a reply to.

If it's a response to something specific said in a previous e-mail then yes, quote the thing you're responding to - but only that bit, not the entire message (unless it's very short), let alone all the previous messages in the conversation. And put the thing you're quoting above your response instead of dumping the whole previous message(s) underneath (the way Outlook et al. seem to want you to even though it makes no damned sense).

Exactly. That's not what I object to - on the contrary, it's the correct way to do it. What I can't stand is top-posting, an abomination born of terrible software design and a seemingly near-universal ignorance of basic netiquette.

Yes, you should always quote enough to make it clear what you're replying to (and this may occasionally include a relevant extract from the message that was replying to). But quoting the whole of a long message when you're only responding to one bit of it is even worse - it's equally unclear and takes up more space on the screen. And if you're making a general reply rather than responding to one or more specific things, don't quote at all (in forums or e-mail).

Just out of curiosity, why would you say it's better to have your response below? Assuming the quote was necessary in the first place, I find it easier in e-mails if I first read the response, then if I need more context, scroll down to see previous correspondance, rather than having to scroll through a previous email before finding what the guy wrote.
Strangely though, in forums I do prefer if the quote goes first.

I feel the same way, both with e-mail and forums.

Like this.
> How?
>> Because it means the reader has to read the conversation backwards.
>>> Why not?
>>>> Because it doesn't make sense to put it above.
Now that I've got that out of the way...

The point is that if the respondent sets out their reply correctly you won't need to scroll to find out what they wrote, because the bit they quote will be short enough not require any scrolling - it'll have just enough to make it clear what they're replying to, with the response readily visible immediately underneath. If they're replying to several different bits then each one will be quoted separately in turn, with the relevant response immediately underneath each bit.

Contrast the top-posting that has become the norm - having the reply at the top gives no indication of which bit of the previous message is being replied to, or even if the message being responded to is the immediately preceding one or an earlier one. And to read the earlier messages to get context, you need to scroll all the way to the bottom (i.e. start) of the reproduced e-mail chain, then scroll to the top of the first message, then scroll down as you read it, then scroll back up to the top of the second message, scroll down as you read that, scroll up to the top of the third message and so on. It means more awkward scrolling, not less.

Of course, it may be that the reply makes it obvious what is being responded to, or is just a general response rather than addressing a specific section of an earlier e-mail, so there is no need to quote a snippet immediately above it to provide context - but that's not an argument for top-posting, it's an argument for not quoting the previous message(s) at all.

I actually prefer to do "in-line" replies, if the medium can make it obvious that you're doing so, because when you do that, you don't necessarily lose context of the conversation, although it can make reading the same conversation over with replies a bit redundant. Not a bad thing actually, because it actually helps aid in remembering the content.

The problems I've found with top-posting and putting a reply at the bottom is that valuable information can get lost if people start to get bored with entire quotes and just 'tune' out. However, I think creative editing of the reply so that the relevant contextual information to the reply immediately precedes its response, there is much less a chance it will be missed.

I think it's all about getting your point across, whether you lead into a conversation, reply to a quote and creatively edit (hopefully not losing context in the process).

Why is my post at the top of this page "low rated"? If you are one of the people who downrepped that post, please kindly tell me what the problem with that post was.

No clue since there's nothing wrong with it, Personally I hate html in my email and I have it set to text only for sending & receiving, so I agree with you for the most part. Blows up a 3k message to 300k easily. Thankfully storage is cheap for the online services :P

More seriously I hate including entire messages unless they are relevant. Often I manually delete older messages past say 2-3 if they are short so I know what we are talking about without having to look it up, or better yet replying to specific lines, like so: etc... Oh as for the bird... (just funny since it's part of the topic right now :P)