Hi, nobody wants to hurt, harm or insult you.
It is just that 95% of all public mailing lists have this two simple rules: no top posting no html A lot of people don't even read html mails, some even get angry about them, so when somebody tells you, not to send them, (s)he does it to help you. The less people reading your mails, the less usefull answers you get. And some mailing lists are very harsh - one html mail and you are the ass of the week for them. Plus, not using html does spare you and everybody else some time sending/receiving your mails, so it is a double win for everybody when you don't use it. That is all. You are, of course, free to send plain text and html, but as I said, most people don't read html mails anyway, so it is just some wasted bandwith. When you are exchanging mails off list, it is a completly different topic. If your friends read html-mails and don't mind receiving them - or even like them, you are free to send them as you like. But mailing lists are a little bit different - because there are a lot of receivers. And did I mention, that some people discard html-mails automatically as spam? So, when you got told not to top post or use html mails, (s)he didn't want to do anything 'bad' to you - the opposite is true, (s)he wants to help you to reach as many other users as possible - which should be what you want, right? Sometimes this 'educating' may sound much harsher than ment - but don't forget, that for a lot of people on this (or every public) mailing list english is only the second or third language - and hitting the right 'tone' is not easy, if you are not a native speaker. So don't feel bad - we all just want to help you, to make the mailing list as productive and helpfull for you as possible. Glück Auf Volker -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
