syntax oddities

[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, May 19, 2018 at 1:09 AM, Richard Damon <Richard at damon-family.org> wrote:
> If the thread forks, and someone is brought into one of the forks to
> help with an issue brought up in THAT fork, then the context will
> generally be sufficient for that.

That assumes that they don't need any information that was posted in
reply to something else.

> Normally people WILL reply to the latest message in the chain (and in
> fact Outlook will warn you if you are not doing that). The main reason
> people don't reply to the most recent message is that several people
> replied nearly simultaneously, and yes the  other comments not in the
> message people carry forward will get lost from the history. But for
> that to happen you need multiple active participants in the conversation
> which starts to strays away from the model.

Considering that I've had situations with 3-4 active participants and
replies-to-non-last-emails on our family mailing list - a list whose
membership is literally just my parents and siblings (including one
sister-in-law) - I would be astonished if it's a rare occurrence in
corporate environments. Unless, of course, the norm is to snap off an
email instantly, without bothering to actually put any thought into
what's being said. Oh wait, it probably is...

ChrisA