I’ve spent a fair bit of time on various mailing lists recently, mostly dealing with the development of new software and programming languages, and I’ve come across the most annoying thing ever.

[snip]

> Quoted section of previous e-mail

Quick comment on single aspect of previous e-mail which I've quoted above.

[snip]

We all get that you’re quoting him and that, because you’re quoting a small section of a larger e-mail, we may need to read more of the previous email to understand your comment in context, but that’s why any self-respecting email client supports threading of related e-mails, especially when under the purview of mailing lists.

If we really want to, all we have to do is scroll up a bit and we’ll get the previous posts in the thread. Also, if we’re reading a posting on a mailing list, I think it’s safe to assume that we’ve been reading along and are aware of the context of the discussion.

So please stop snipping. When there are more snips than there are useful contributions to the discussion, you have a problem.