At 06:53 PM 10/13/2002 -0400, David A. Desrosiers wrote:
> > *** I cannot understand why those who seem to have so much experience,
> > cannot be more tolerant of others.
>
> Unfortunately, this isn't about tolerance, it's about etiquette.
David, after our last discussion of this, I bowed out of it because the
group is largely agreed upon certain behaviors and I'm happy to adjust mine
to fit. But you and at least one other Plucker-veteran are not
incontrovertably correct about the top-posting issue being "etiquette",
which would imply some sort of universal agreement, and tend to sound
arrogant and patronizing towards deviants. Take a look at the newsgroups
seattle.general and seattle.eats over the last few weeks... there has been
a long discussion about this same topic (with zero input from me... I only
read it out of curiousity because of the zealotry of a few of you here)
where the majority seem to view top-posting as preferable.
Again I don't personally care, and after a brief thread on it have simply
adjusted as requested. But perhaps you could tone down your 'tude a
bit. It's not like someone sneezing in your food, which presumably is
universally considered a "bad thing" regardless of location, culture, etc.
> Using a message in a thread as a template for a completely unrelated
>message on a different topic is wrong, and will not be tolerated by most
>people, including Mike, myself, and others. It's annoying, rude, and lazy.
Again your arrogant bigotry showing through. Most professional letters and
nearly all legal ones are based on templates. The only reason it's
annoying or turns out to be rude is that there are mail headers that thread
it... something not obvious to the new users. I was guilty of that in my
first week posting here, until I looked at the web archives and realized
the resulting odd threading and checked out the entire message
headers. I've tried to be more careful since. I use Eudora 4.3, which
doesn't make editing outgoing headers easy, so even discerning the problem
took a bit of detective work.
But David, what would be rude or annoying annoying about it if not for the
header problem? Are you just in a particularly nasty and intolerant mood,
or is there something inherently unsavory (to you) in people hitting
"reply" rather than typing in "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"?
> This is related to Plucker, and discussing Plucker. Let's just make
>the etiquette clear, identify ways to correct it, provide solutions, and
>move on.
Yes, let's. Of course I did a while ago and bowed out. But David, you
being nasty, unpleasant, and arrogant obviously isn't solving the problem,
so perhaps the best way to "correct it" (if you really wish to... i.e. if
you don't attack top-posters and thread-hijaackers as a form of
entertainment akin to shooting fish in a barrel) is to actually mention
this stuff on the sign-up page. None of it was there when I joined, this
was suggested several times since, and it still isn't there. Ideally you
should include a bit about email headers too.
My proposal would be this:
The Plucker lists follow standard email list protocol as defined at
www.<insert appropriate site here>. This means the following:
1. Turn HTML formatting OFF in your email client. Do not use
italics, colors, bold, fonts, pictures, sounds, or e-aromas. Only
straight text is allowed.
2. If you are replying to another message, quote only the portions
of that message that you are specifically responding to, and insert
your comments after those quotes. Do not "top-post", as it loses
the flow of the logic and annoys other readers.
3. Stay on-topic for the list. This isn't a good place to discuss
automobiles, politics, music, or anything that isn't Plucker-related.
(Why a particular political site fails to pluck would be valid fodder,
but you'd be best off first finding a less controversial site with
the same
problem, preferably one run by militantly pro-Linux fanatics, and
using
THAT site to illustrate the problem.)
4. Do not start a new thread or topic by hitting "Reply" and
changing
the subject. The mailing list uses mail headers, which may require a
special command (such as "Blah blah" in Eudora, by xxx in Microsoft
Outlook, by clicking "Full Headers" in Yahoo...) to view. These
are used
to "thread" the threads. Start a new thread by starting and manually
addressing a new message.
David, I realize these are somewhat Windows-centric, but those are the
people you're objecting to. Some gentle education at the list sign-up
point will at least allow you to be arrogant and patronizing with some
irrefutable support such as, "You bozo, didn't you READ the list rules when
you signed up?!?! "
Does anyone on the list have the power and willingness to solve the problem
by modifying the page at http://www.plkr.org/index.pl/contact and at
http://lists.rubberchicken.org/mailman/listinfo or are we just whistling
Dixie?
Tony McNamara
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