At 12:03 -0700 6/14/09, Kyle Hansen wrote: >On 6/14/09 6:54 AM, "Dan" <[email protected]> Broadcast into the ether: > >> No, not the rest of the world. Top posting is fine for light >> conversational chatting, where context is relatively unimportant. >> All other threads should be bottom posted and trimmed. > >True even in my workplaces. Only an emergency would be top posted. Same >when I worked at Apple (the mothership).
There was a time - before e-mail and even before messaging to another colleague on the same computer - when mail was in the form of a piece of paper inside of an envelope which might well be one of those reusable ones with the holes to show content. The proper procedure was to write your message on a letter head, place it ON TOP of a photocopy of the letter you were responding to and then send it off. It would really be bad manners to put the copy on top and make your recipient figure out what you intended. Today we would call it top posting and it's still quite appropriate for e-mails to your boss or someone who works for you. The environment of an e-mail list service is just different. But the list owner has some privileges. Why not: 1: Use demime to get rid of useless HTML submitted by posters. There are reasons for HTML but list postings rarely need it. Perhaps a procedure for allowing HTML in short attachments for special cases. After a few postings get mangled users would get wise to submitting in ASCII text only. 2: Limit quoted text to, say, 20 lines and enforce it by truncating in software. 3: Provide a link to the message being replied to that can be used by any reader who needs to follow the thread more closely. Those once useful Message-ID: and In-Reply-To: headers are still available for many e-mail clients. List software could easily enforce it. If nothing else a URL to an archived message could be added. 4: Stop wrapping text to an arbitrary line length. SMTP allows "lines" of 998 characters and I submit that there is no transfer agent still operating that can't handle it. Google will likely wrap this text so that you, dear reader, cannot change the window size and expect text to be word wrapped the way you like to see it. Long URI's are likely to be broken. 5: Take note of the postfixed additions generated by the list. Write some software that removes copies left there by inexperienced posters before adding yet another copy. 6: Either get rid of the [G3-5] list identifier in the subject line or make it optional for each client. Encourage list users to filter based on the List-id: header In short - muck with the list software to get what you want without repetitive requests to "please stop top posting". -- --> Halloween == Oct 31 == Dec 25 == Christmas <-- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
