[thelist] Please trim, please don't top post.

Ken Schaefer ken at adOpenStatic.com
Mon Jul 26 08:49:18 CDT 2004


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From: "William Anderson" <neuro at well.com>
Subject: Re: [thelist] Please trim, please don't top post.


: Ken Schaefer wrote:
: > Thanks for sharing what *you* like. <sarcasm>Let's all change our habits
: > because Liam prefers things a certain way.</sarcasm>
:
: Top posting and not trimming replies are behaviourally
: "wrong" for several reasons:
:
: 1) http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html
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Maybe I'm missing things, but I don't see anything in this RFC about
top -vs- bottom posting. Can you point me to the relevant section?

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: 2) http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/usenet/brox.html
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Complains about the typical behaviour of those that top-post, rather than
top-posting per se. Personally I don't feel that I, as a general rule,
"reply to the first question and ignore the rest" when I top-post (for
example)

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: 3) http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html
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This is not usenet. Nor am I a self confessed "usenet fanatic" like the
authors

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: 4) http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanb/documents/quotingguide.html
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Again, this is not usenet.

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: Your rationale for preferring top-posting are your own
: personal reasons, so  it's rather unfair to berate someone
: asking for netiquette adherence by saying it's they way
: they "prefer things".
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If you read the original post, it was full of "I prefer...", "I want..."
sentences. That's why I pointed out that I'm not particularly interested in
OP's personal preferences, hence the "sarcasm" tags. I pointed out that I
have /alternate/ preferences and asked the list to adhere to both please.

Since we both have alternate preferences, why don't we just let the argument
lie? There is no way that everyone's going to be happy, so let's not start
the same tired argument that's seen over just about every other mailing list
out there as well.

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: Bottom posting for conversational flow is something that's been
: the de-facto reply standard in email and usenet for decades -
: why mess with something because new technologies don't
: cater for or don't respect standards?
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Because sometimes there are better ways of doing things. Otherwise, the
printing press wouldn't exist, and we'd still riding horses to get from "a"
to "b". Now, it's not like the alternate methods don't have drawbacks. I
merely presented a list of reasons why someone might prefer top-posting -vs-
bottom posting to illustrate that there is no clear objective benefit to
prefer bottom-posting to top-posting.


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: btw, reading thelist over gprs is your choice, I suppose,
: but reading a high-volume list on a mobile device?
: You're brave :)
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Well, Liam brought up using a PDA in the first place. I synch my main
folders using a direct cable connection overnight, and then synch the device
wirelessly during the day (selected folders only - not this one). That
doesn't mean that I prefer offlist mail (for example) bottom posted. When
synching, the option is to have the first xx bytes downloaded, and I'd
prefer something top-posted to bottom posted in that respect. Others may
prefer something else. So, how about we just let the whole thing lie because
different people prefer different things.

Cheers
Ken



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