DISCLAIMER: Top posting because I'm on my phone. :)

SMTP (mail), like NNTP (mail), actually contain headers with prior 'Message
ID' enumeration, which allows for full threading of an entire conversation.
This is not only an effective 1970-80s implement, but still works in the
age of web archives.

IETF RFC821 and/or 822 apply here, among other, early ISOC standards.

In fact, it was originally designed well enough that both SMTP (mail) and
NNTP (news) could work together in a discussion forum at the same time, so
people could participate in the same discussion with either. How? Again,
clients always tracking Message ID.

This is also the time frame where many 'ettique' discussions first began,
such as the O'Reilly posting guidelines on top v. bottom posting, when to
change the subject - which did not affect threading because of Message ID
tracking - and other things. These classic uses of SMTP/NNTP were
considered the 'Gold Standard' and quoted often by many in FAQs.

Unfortunately... the '90s happened.

The first PC/Windows e-mail clients used their own protocols and slowly
adopted Internet standards support... slowly, if poorly. One thing utterly
not respected was Message ID, and now threading was broken. Eventually some
supported some things, and it became better.

But, again, unfortunately... the '00s happened.

Google Mail (Gmail) brought us the age of 'we are the standard,' and they
purposely _ignored_ Message ID for years, and focused on sort by subject...
so much so at least one developer at Google literally and purposely ignored
it. This broke the biggest O'Reilly Guideline... change the subject line
(preface new subject, and use 'WAS:' for the old in suffix), as it wasn't
compatible.

E.g., we now had 300+ messages in web archives entirely and inappropriately
entitled with quite broken threading, as if independent conversations that
had nothing to do with the original subject.

It was at this point, in the early to mid '00s, that there were now 100x+
more 'new' Internet users than us 'old dogs' and... well... they all wanted
to 'lecture' us old dogs on how to use the Internet. All prior History,
Standards and Considerations be darned.

So... what do I do? I just don't argue. I care for the message, not take
issue with the messenger. Just a suggestion. I'm fine with people ignoring
me.

Of course, I'm a clear American Gen-X'er, so I get to laugh when people
respond to me with 'Okay Boomer,' as if I'm my father who fought at Khe
Sahn in '68 or something. Ignorance is bliss.

- bjs

P.S. I cannot speak for anyone else, but when I was with Red Hat, we were
told not to use our redhat e-mail addresses in public forums and even
Upstream contributions not only because it could seem 'official' in the
eyes of the greater community, but... we may wish to move to another open
source company, and our personal e-mails are best in that regard as well.
This, of course, made it more difficult to track Red Hat's overall
contributions in the Upstream, but... it made a lot of sense.

So I don't blame any LPI Board Member for continuing to use their personal
e-mail addrsses, especially since they are largely compensated volunteers
(and even have unreimbrised expenses in some cases, because they love LPI
and volunteer... although LPI does its best to cover many items) and do it
for the greater community. Many represent many other organizations as well,
the ones that let them eat, including their own name, for those of us that
get most of our work first-hand based on our name and e-mail addresses.


-- 
Sent from my phone, apologies for any brevity as well as autocorrect
Bryan J Smith - http://linkedin.com/in/bjsmith

On Mon, Oct 3, 2022, 05:27 Ottavio Caruso via lpi-examdev <
[email protected]> wrote:

> On Mon, 3 Oct 2022 at 11:00, Jason Kinney via lpi-examdev
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > Top posting is correct email etique when you are replying to an entire
> thread rather than specific points.
>
> There's no such a thing as a thread in email. Thread is a concept for
> web forums, social media, etc.
>
> The fact that you think Unix is a cult is worrying.
>
> --
> Ottavio Caruso
>
> A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
> A: Top-posting.
> Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
> _______________________________________________
> lpi-examdev mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://list.lpi.org/mailman/listinfo/lpi-examdev
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