On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 09:33:59 PST,
(Everett M. Greene) wrote:

The occasional droid who's jumping in in the middle of the thread,
or who can't keep track of a conversation from one minute to the
next, is perfectly welcome to scroll down and look for context.

No reason why everyone else should have to read along with him.

That is important. When reading a post in a thread, the reader has
ALREDAY been exposed to the quoted material, the response (at whatever
location in that post) is read AFTER that other stuff.

Not necessarily true. Usenet does not guarantee delivery
of postings so a reader may be coming into the middle of
a thread. Also, people don't always continuously subscribe
to newsgroups so they may have missed earlier postings.