...

[Guy Harris]

> unfortunately many msgs arrive out of sequence, and i read the rebuttal
> before the statement.

It's even worse.  Think of USENET as a datagram service.  Not only do
messages arrive out of sequence; sometimes they don't arrive at all.

Furthermore, lacking a split-screen news reader, we can't always see the
point being replied to at the same time we see the reply.  And even if
we had split-screen news readers, we'd have to slough through the original
article to find the point being replied to.

> you are correct in that we dont have to include the entire msg tho.

Fortunately, unedited inclusions of the original article are relatively
rare, although not rare enough.

(I'd move this to "net.news", except that the original posting came from
INFO-C, and I don't think "net.news" gets gatewayed to the ARPANET.)

	Guy Harris
	{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy