>But there's one guy around here that deletes out everything and you just see his reply, but it's not always obvious what he was replying to.
>
>In relation to that, see today's Dilbert:
>
>http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/

"Nothing is too long when properly shortened". Some people really don't take the time to make it short. Deleting all of the previous message is equally lazy as deleting none of it. Either way, the reader has to do the footwork of looking up the reference - in the previous message or the same message.

You may notice that I never call a message "original". It's so pretentious :).