On 6/21/2014 8:00 PM, Bradley O'Hearne wrote:
On Jun 21, 2014, at 7:21 AM, wm4 <[email protected]> wrote:
I also top posted once and I was also told that this is rude.
This must be an FFmpeg thing. I have never heard of this being
"rude" before (no offense guys).
So far I've only seen cehoyos complaining about it being rude. I
find his pedantry about this quite rude in return.
It isn’t rude. It never has been rude.
Maybe the word "rude" is too strong. How about "bad form"? I think
most first time posters have never heard the phrase "top post", and
surely Carl realizes this, so I've thought of it as more of an
informative statement. As opposed to the firing of verbal weaponry.
Perhaps "bad form" has a gentler sound to it :)
Sometime after the first fifty
times I saw the issue of “top-posting” being made an issue above the
actual questions being asked I decided to go out to Wikipedia and
read the rationale for this “rude” business so I could be a good
citizen, to find that it isn’t any kind of Internet standard, it is
an artifact from old Usenet days, and that while still the tradition
on some mailing lists (like FFmpeg) that will get you flamed, it is
not by any means the most common approach for replying on mailing
lists or forums.
I think you will agree that many forums do have rules/guidelines for
posting though, and it's a reasonable thing to have. Not everyone will
agree with them.
If anything, it ignores the behavior of the most
commonly used mail clients
Probably true, but to me, it's a simple matter to jump the cursor to the
bottom of the mail and start typing there.
> and also ignores what mobile devices do
for purposes of efficiency, where users are encouraged to top-post.
This one is a mystery to me, to be honest. I don't use mobile devices,
so it leaves me curious...
But it makes for a great way to be unkind to complete strangers, and
make them feel stupid in front of everyone else if you can’t come up
with an answer, don’t agree with their thoughts, are just generally
annoyed by their questions, or derive some kind of satisfaction by
putting others down.
This may be overstating things a bit. I don't think most mailing list
participants are like this. But I can't help but feel like I know where
you're coming from--I remember some of your older threads becoming
unusually contentious.
In my personal opinion, bottom posting is much more natural, and I
prefer it. In fact, I didn't know what top-posting was either when I
first posted, but I never ran afoul of that guideline because I
coincidentally already did it the "right" way. I think when you're
reading previous pieces of a thread to gain background and context on
the immediate post you're looking at, it's natural to read from the top
down. That's how books are written, in English anyway, so it just makes
sense to me to do it that way.
So there may be legitimate arguments that the posted guidelines need
changing. But does it also make sense that giving newcomers a *gentle*
poke when they don't follow the guidelines, whatever they may be, is
okay to do?
Andy
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