Everyone,

While the recent vibrant discussion on archaeology conferences has probably been the single most entertaining HISTARCH thread since the 1994 Robert Johnson flare-up (even if a quick search of the archives confirms that Conrad raised more or less precisely the same points to more or less precisely the same reaction in May of last year - so I hope we don't have to have this conversation every time an SHA conference organiser posts in HISTARCH; the Quebec committee have my full sympathies there), could I raise a quick practical point....

Without meaning to in any way step on Anita's toes, when replying to a HISTARCH message, perhaps consider whether you need to quote the entirety of the preceding discussion.

Those of us who subscribe to the digest version sometimes end up receiving exceptionally long e-mails where most of the body of the text consists of re-quoted passages of earlier e-mails, and where a thread is particularly long - as with the Quebec conference discussion - this often means the same long re-quotes are then repeated multiple times, making it difficult to follow discussion and identify where new messages begin and end.

So where a discussion is really long, it might be helpful to only quote the last couple of e-mails in that thread when you reply rather than the whole thing.

Thanks,

Alasdair Brooks