On Tue, 4 Sep 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote: >on Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 01:53:24PM -0600, John Galt ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: >> >> In case nobody told you, this is a mailinglist, not usenet. > >Wrong, it's both: > > news:muc.lists.debian.user
mail to news gateways notwithstanding >> To be more precise, this is a reliable method of ensuring that >> anything you reply to has already been read, thus you shouldn't need >> to scroll through the question all of the time to get to the answer. >> However, for the people who wish to backstop, it's important that the >> question be in the same message as the answer so that misteaks can be >> corrected contextually. Thus top posting is more appropriate. > >My preference is that top posting never be considered appropriate. >We've now got a situation in which I'm responding to a top-quoted post, >in which prior content is now further down the list. And you somehow are shriveling up? >If a long response in which context is largely irrelevant is desired, >quoting a line or two of context, and posting beneath it, is far >preferable. Unless, of course the line or two are the wrong ones. >> Needless to say, the best method is to let the replier define how >> their reply goes, but you really didn't do that to Hall, so I feel >> justified in correcting you. > >The problem with suggesting prefix responses are suitable in any context >is that this leads almost immediately to bad practices: Yeah, like the free exchange of ideas: can't have that. > - Prefix responses including the entire message body, sigs included, > of the message replied to. In one recent case, this was up to 600+ > lines of a list digest. The *multiple* miscreants were roundly > flamed. Better than having to deal with 600+ lines of quote, then the response. What makes you think that appending was going to change their quotation? > - Excessive quoting, sigs and all. How does appending rather than prepending change this? > - Prefix responses where followups (and hence, mixed pre/postfix > responses) are likely. E.g.: present case. So? Did someone hold a gun to anyone's heads to post the way they did? (actually, I kind of got logically forced into at least one prepend response: it's hard to argue a case you don't follow) > - Prefix responses in all contexts. As opposed to postfix responses in all contexts? It is much more often the case that a postfixer screws up a nice prefix thread than the opposite: often prefix threads devolve into point-by-point, while postfix threads end up with lost context because of overzealous editing. >The poster is requesting the favor of a reply from the readership. This >particular reader strongly deprecates prefix response, and tends to skip >such posts. THIS one thinks that the message is more important than the form. >From "NNQ: Quoting Style in Newsgroup Postings" WHAT DAMN NEWSGROUP? Mail to news does NOT mean it's a newsgroup, anymore than bit.listserv.coco is a mailinglist, even though Princeton has mirrored it to a mailing list since it's inception. > http://www.ptialaska.net/~kmorgan/nquote.html > > Q7: Why shouldn't I put my comments above the quoted material? When you read your mail with rn, and have to send email over the "this message is about to be sent to millions of computers" warning of pnews, we'll talk. > A7: Keep in mind that you're not writing just for the person whose > posting you're responding to. (If you are, you should be e-mailing > your response instead of posting it.) Thousands of other people may > read what you write. People who aren't directly involved in a > discussion themselves, and who are probably following several > discussions at once, usually follow the logic more easily when they > can read the material in more-or-less chronological order. > > When you have just a single question and response, and they're both > short, and the discussion doesn't develop any further, it really > doesn't make that much difference in practice. But it's impossible > to predict in advance whether a response will draw another response. > So in general, it's best to put your response below the text that > you're responding to. > > >From "Email Quotes" in the Jargon File: > http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/Email-Quotes.html No, the jargon file (THD) never had anything about posting at all. It was added in TNHD. http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/external/p.dourish/jargon.html Therefore, this is all the personal preference of ESR. > Most netters view an inclusion as a promise that comment on it will > immediately follow. The preferred, conversational style looks like > this, > > relevant excerpt 1 > response to excerpt > > relevant excerpt 2 > response to excerpt > > relevant excerpt 3 > response to excerpt > > or for short messages like this: > > entire message > response to message > > Thanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents, one will > occasionally see the entire quoted message after the response, like > this Hmmm, elm is a PC-based mail agent? Pine? Better tell that to Sun and HP. ISTR that VMS's mail client also put the cursor right after the header and switched to insert mode in a quotation situation. > response to message > > entire message > > but this practice is strongly deprecated. > > >From "Configuring your news reader to post to uk.*" > > http://www.usenet.org.uk/ukpost.html#s3 > > Always put your reply text after the text you are quoting. Remember > that the purpose of quoted text is to provide a context for your > reply - if your reply comes first, forcing the reader to look > further down the message for what you are replying to, the purpose > of quoting (to make things easier for the reader) has been defeated. Hmmm. ISU...UK Just doesn't fit. Something about a revolution in 1776 or such... I'm not to sure about the details, but I'm sure that I owe no allegiance to the UK anymore. > >Even the Microsoft NG guidelines suggest postfix response: > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Welcome - read this first! > > http://www.jsiinc.com/newsgroup_document.htm > > In follow-ups, whether News or Mail, CUT headers & signatures, PRUNE > quotations, and preserve order. That is to say, quote above each > part of your reply as much of the earlier stuff as is needed to put > the new material in context, but no more; most readers will be able > to refer to the earlier article itself, if need be. A gold-plated source, that one. Are we also supposed to use the WinNT security model for Debian? >And for general reference (including pointers to the above references), >see "FAQ: Of quoting". > > http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/http/quote.html > >> On Tue, 4 Sep 2001, J.H.M. Dassen (Ray) wrote: >> >> >On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 08:26:35 -0400, Hall Stevenson wrote: >> >> Now, 'use postfix response' ?? >> > >> >"Reply below the text you're responding to". >> > >> >To borrow a sig: "Answering above the the original message is called top >> >posting. Sometimes also called the Jeopardy style. Usenet is Q & A not A & >> >Q." -- Bob Gootee >> > > >QED. > > -- * You are not expected to understand this. --comment from Unix system 6 source, credited to Lions and Johnson Who is John Galt? [EMAIL PROTECTED], that's who: finger me for GPG key
