You may have heard of "top posting" and "bottom posting" in the context of emails. Many email clients, when replying to an email, will insert the entire thread thus far into the reply, leaving you to write your message at the top. This results in emails like this:
Yes, that sounds good. Jim said on 2019-03-23 at 11:02 PM: > Are you okay with maroon? > > Tim said on 2019-03-23 at 10:43 PM: >> Do we know what color we should use for the background? >> >>> Jim said on 2019-03-23 at 10:30 PM: >>> Is there anything left to do on the site?
This is called "top posting", and it gets out of hand pretty quickly. This is strongly discouraged on most mailing lists. Many people don't realize that you can actually edit the previous messages when composing your reply. A better response would be:
Jim said on 2019-03-23 at 11:02 PM: > Are you okay with maroon? Yes, that sounds good.
Trim out the fat, only quoting what you need, and respond inline. This also becomes useful for clarifying what parts of a message you're replying to. If I received this email, for example:
Hey Drew, Can you look into the bug which is causing 2.34 clients to disconnect immediately? I think this is related to the timeouts change last week. Also, your fix to the queueing bug is confirmed for the next release, thanks!
I might reply like this:
Hey Sarah, I can look into that for sure. > I think this is related to the timeouts change last week. I'm not so sure. I think reducing the timeouts would *improve* this issue, if anything. I'll look into it. > Also, your fix to the queueing bug is confirmed for the next release, > thanks! Sweet! Happy to help.
This style is also useful for reviewing patches - quote the specific lines you have feedback on, and trim out everything else. Here's an example email thread showing a simple code review that you can check out if you're curious.
Thanks for your patience! We know that learning how to fit in with a new community and a new style of communication can be tough, but everyone appreciates your effort.