Is there a way to prevent Gmail from quoting entire replies?

Question

Is there any way to stop Gmail quoting the entire previous message when I hit reply?

I can use the "Quote selected text" labs feature to narrow down when I do want to quote something, but that still leaves me deleting the full message quotes every other time I hit reply, which is a pain.

(I'm hoping there's an obscure option somewhere I've missed, but if it has to be browser-based, I use Chrome.)

Answer 1

Currently there is no way.

You'll have to trim or remove the quoted text yourself.

You can make use of the "Quote selected text" labs module by highlighting some blank space in the email and replying to that.

That will then leave you with something along the lines of:

On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 4:00 AM, Example <mail@example.com> wrote:
>

Which is far less than before, but sadly still not as empty as wanted.