A user is viewing a conversation with many messages. However, the messages in the conversation can use

• top-posting,
• bottom-posting or
• inline posting

The user thus finds it difficult to navigate because the quoted segments of the conversation are not ordered clearly. The user may also prefer certain styles of posting (either top or bottom) and find it annoying that others are posting in a different style.

The repeated parts of the conversation can be automatically detected and hidden, ala Gmail. There are several ways to go about the solution:

• Check for repeated lines (these often end up being paragraphs).
• Divide text into sentences and check for repeated sentences.
• By default, the quoted text can either be all hidden or all displayed. It might also be good to only hide the quoted text when it is at the end of the message, as when it is in the middle, the user is likely to want to see it for context.

Finally, the text should have a Javascript run link that hides/shows the text when clicked.

See http://movicont.nfshost.com/try/2010-June/leaving.html for examples of what I've generated.