On Sep 20, 2010, at 7:20 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote: > One of the problems I have seen emerge on many IETF mailing lists is the > habit of fisking.
Please clarify what you mean by fisking. > By fisking I mean responding to a post line by line *while reading it for > the first time*. Thanks. And why is this a bad thing, in your view? > I seem to be reading an increasing number of posts on various lists where it > is very clear to me that the poster did not bother to read the entire message > before starting their reply. Perhaps they're just very busy people? Are you too ignorant to have thought of that? > In particular I have read rather a lot of people starting off by accusing > their opponent of being ignorant of issues that their opponent actually > states only a few paragraphs further on. Reading ahead is hard, you can't expect everyone to do it. Many of us are too busy and important to take the time to compose a message carefully, so it makes sense to require everyone else to take longer to read our messages. > Traditionally, top-posting (or bottom posting) has been discouraged in favor > of responding line by line. I think it is time to reverse that preference. You can't tell me what to do; that's what the Nazis did. You suck. > In particular I find that arguments are often less combative and somewhat > shorter Is that a crack about my height? I dare you to say it to my face at the next IETF. > in mediums where people are forced to restate the issue they are objecting to > in their own words. In all seriousness, forcing any particular approach is the real issue. I can't imagine how it would be accomplished. What I'd really like to force people to do is be more thoughtful and restrained; if they did that, it wouldn't much matter what approach they took to replies. -- Nathaniel PS for the humor impaired -- only my last paragraph was intended to be serious. -- nsb _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list [email protected] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
