Re: Mail Etiquette: Reply above or below
It makes it easier to know what part of the original message a response is in reply to. As a general rule you should reply in-line, quoting only the specific parts of a message your response is in reference to. Matthew Eric Johnson writes: > --- Original Message --- > On Tuesday, March 7th, 2023 at 03:50, Peter N. M. Hansteen > wrote: > > > For whatever reason, Microsoft's Outlook or possibly earlier Microsoft mail > > client products dragged in a convention of quoting the whole thread (even > > though > > those early clients did not in fact have the thread concept) and putting new > > text on top. > > Don't forget AOL. In the old UseNet days, AOLers seemed to > be the ones who most insisted on top posting and it drove the > rest of us crazy. > > I'm not positive, but I think that the AOL software handled > the mail and Microsoft came around to it somewhat later. > > I have come around to the point that I don't mind top posting > if the remarks pretty much stand on their own and only address > a single point. It even saves scrolling down to the bottom to > read the comments, especially if the person being responded to > didn't snip those parts that don't really relate to the comments > being made. > > But you are right that inline is the way to go for anything > suitably complicated in order to eliminate any chance of > someone else getting confused about what is being referred > to by the comment. > > In one web forum that I participate in, there are a few users > who will quote the message being replied to and then insert > their comments intermixed within the quoted part instead of > separating the quotes out in pieces to avoid the reader from > being seriously confused over who said what. I really hate > it when they do that. > > So in response, I sometimes write my replies using the > character code sequences such as for J. That way, it > forces those who can't be bothered to separate their comments > from the quoted text to keep their text separate. > > I think that the main point is that the purpose of writing > is so that others may understand what you had to say. The > more difficult that someone makes it to decipher what they > wrote, the more people won't even bother with them. > > Eric Why?
Re: Mail Etiquette: Reply above or below
--- Original Message --- On Tuesday, March 7th, 2023 at 03:50, Peter N. M. Hansteen wrote: > For whatever reason, Microsoft's Outlook or possibly earlier Microsoft mail > client products dragged in a convention of quoting the whole thread (even > though > those early clients did not in fact have the thread concept) and putting new > text on top. Don't forget AOL. In the old UseNet days, AOLers seemed to be the ones who most insisted on top posting and it drove the rest of us crazy. I'm not positive, but I think that the AOL software handled the mail and Microsoft came around to it somewhat later. I have come around to the point that I don't mind top posting if the remarks pretty much stand on their own and only address a single point. It even saves scrolling down to the bottom to read the comments, especially if the person being responded to didn't snip those parts that don't really relate to the comments being made. But you are right that inline is the way to go for anything suitably complicated in order to eliminate any chance of someone else getting confused about what is being referred to by the comment. In one web forum that I participate in, there are a few users who will quote the message being replied to and then insert their comments intermixed within the quoted part instead of separating the quotes out in pieces to avoid the reader from being seriously confused over who said what. I really hate it when they do that. So in response, I sometimes write my replies using the character code sequences such as for J. That way, it forces those who can't be bothered to separate their comments from the quoted text to keep their text separate. I think that the main point is that the purpose of writing is so that others may understand what you had to say. The more difficult that someone makes it to decipher what they wrote, the more people won't even bother with them. Eric
Re: Mail Etiquette: Reply above or below
On Tue, 7 Mar 2023 23:47:54 +0100 (GMT+01:00) "Daniele B." wrote: > I'd like to state that unfortunately sometimes it is simply > that we forget to deselect/delete the whole quoted text from the bottom and > this > why almost in my case both the selected quoted text and the full > text appear - depending on the client. Some email clients (e.g. both Claws Mail and Thunderbird), allow you to highlight a piece of text in an email, hit reply, and it'll include *just* that block of quoted text. Handy for situations like this. Sadly, not sure about text-based clients, I don't think `mutt` can for example, but I would love to be shown otherwise on that. -- Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL) I haven't lost my mind... ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.
[OT] Re: Mail Etiquette: Reply above or below
On Tue, 7 Mar 2023 09:36:10 + (UTC) Johannes Thyssen Tishman wrote: > When I reply to an email I do so above the senders message, however I > see many people in the mailing lists replying below it. Is this the > preferred way or just preference? Thanks. It comes down to this, if you're posting above the quote, you're basically (intentionally or not) saying "the context does not matter". The exception to this would be if the thread is written in a language that is read bottom to top, in which case, replying above the quote would be the better system. English is not a language read bottom to top. There might be one or two that are, but I personally do not know of any. If you post below, it's clearly a two-way discussion. Interleaving replies helps a busy person "remind" themselves of what you're replying to instead of scanning up/down/up/down and having to mentally piece the discussion together from top-posted replies. To this day I do not know why "business" people prefer the other style, then consistently moan about how distracting email is. My only guess is I think they forgot that this is an electronic file so it's possible to verbatim quote someone's paragraphs and append your reply below unlike dead-tree snail mail, where you'd have to re-write what the other party said (or involving a photocopier, some scissors and some glue in the process). Regards, -- Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL) I haven't lost my mind... ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.
Re: Mail Etiquette: Reply above or below
On Tue, Mar 07, 2023 at 11:58:14AM +0100, Christer Solskogen wrote: Someone way smarter than me said this: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Why is top-posting such a bad thing? Top-posting. What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? You sure? ... Quoting Nick Holland: " Bottom posting was invented for those who can't write in complete thoughts with context. You know, like most of the computer world. :-/ " https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc=157503288130311=mbox
Re: Mail Etiquette: Reply above or below
I'd like to state that unfortunately sometimes it is simply that we forget to deselect/delete the whole quoted text from the bottom and this why almost in my case both the selected quoted text and the full text appear - depending on the client. Talking about email clients I want to spread the voice (one more time farther then Tom, the owner of Misc) about my actual choice for Android: FairEmail https://email.faircode.eu absolutely recommended! No relationship with it but honestly hay and endorsing it. :D -- Daniele Bonini
Re: Mail Etiquette: Reply above or below
On 2023-03-07 04:50, Peter N. M. Hansteen wrote (in part): For whatever reason, Microsoft's Outlook or possibly earlier Microsoft mail client products dragged in a convention of quoting the whole thread (even though those early clients did not in fact have the thread concept) and putting new text on top. Indeed. When I was forced to use Outlook (or LookOut! as some wrote) and needed to answer in parts, I copied the entire content into a real editor first. (This caused problems with people who used multiple fonts.) S. I think this would point to my preference at least. Cue my 2011 rant about same, enjoy: https://bsdly.blogspot.com/2011/02/problem-isnt-email-its-microsoft.html All the best, Peter
Re: Mail Etiquette: Reply above or below
On Tue, Mar 07, 2023 at 10:50:44AM +0100, Peter N. M. Hansteen wrote: > On Tue, Mar 07, 2023 at 09:36:10AM +, Johannes Thyssen Tishman wrote: > > > > When I reply to an email I do so above the senders message, however I see > > many people in the mailing lists replying below it. Is this the preferred > > way or just preference? Thanks. > > The traditional style is to quote only the parts of the previous message(s) > that you are writing in respose to. > > If you are commenting on several parts of a previous exchange, the convention > would be to offer your own input in several blocks, directly following the > parts you are responding to. > > For whatever reason, Microsoft's Outlook or possibly earlier Microsoft mail > client products dragged in a convention of quoting the whole thread (even > though > those early clients did not in fact have the thread concept) and putting new > text on top. Of course it had to be Microsoft. > > I think this would point to my preference at least. Cue my 2011 rant about > same, enjoy: > https://bsdly.blogspot.com/2011/02/problem-isnt-email-its-microsoft.html Thanks, will check it out :) > > All the best, > Peter > > -- > Peter N. M. Hansteen, member of the first RFC 1149 implementation team > https://bsdly.blogspot.com/ https://www.bsdly.net/ https://www.nuug.no/ > "Remember to set the evil bit on all malicious network traffic" > delilah spamd[29949]: 85.152.224.147: disconnected after 42673 seconds. > -- Johannes Thyssen Tishman E-Mail: johan...@thyssentishman.com Website: thyssentishman.com
Re: Mail Etiquette: Reply above or below
Hello Johannes, Firstly, others have written helpful and correct responses, please follow these suggestions. Those replies also look perfect and are easy to follow in my personal mail client (which is Outlook). For the record, there are members of this community that couldn't care less if someone top-posts, bottom-posts, inline posts, side-posts, reverse posts, private posts, 3D posts, Saturn posts, etc. However, this is likely a minority, and there are community guidelines as others have pointed out. Personally, my responses are usually focussed responses to a particular question/comment (which I often put in quotation marks because I don't care for the ">" everywhere, I mean, we're still allowed to have preferences) or fairly extensive rants, which are comprehensive responses to the whole topic/thread. Speaking of standardizing every aspect of the netiquette on the mailing list, can we please reserve quotation marks for actual quotations and use apostrophes instead for 'random use'? (I'm joking, but this standardization of email exchange can become a slippery slope). I'm not saying that these approaches are correct or condoning them, but they have not gotten me into horrible trouble (and I'm a member of many OSS mailing lists) and have still allowed for helpful engagement. This likely says something very positive about the communities. Again, I am not condoning this. We all use different mail clients. What I find annoying, and it is no one's fault here (well, it actually could be, but I'm not going to point any fingers), are mailing-list emails where all I see is three horizontal dots when I open the message (see: Claudio Jeker's response to the "Folks are there any tips to improve page load times on smokeping running on OpenBSD" thread in Outlook). I realize this is my mail client. It is a correct way of doing e-mail correspondence. Still, as with many things, MS has made it incredibly annoying. Sincerely, Katie From: owner-m...@openbsd.org on behalf of Zé Loff Sent: 07 March 2023 05:39 To: Johannes Thyssen Tishman Cc: misc@openbsd.org Subject: Re: Mail Etiquette: Reply above or below Attention : courriel externe | external email On Tue, Mar 07, 2023 at 09:36:10AM +, Johannes Thyssen Tishman wrote: > Hi, > > When I reply to an email I do so above the senders message, however I > see many people in the mailing lists replying below it. Is this the > preferred way or just preference? Thanks. > > Kind regards, > Johannes For OpenBSD's mailing lists, the netiquette rules are clearly presented here https://www.openbsd.org/mail.html. Another unwritten rule (and not exclusive to these lists, I'd say) is that if someone replies off-list you *don't* reply back through the list (i.e. you don't "pull" the reply back in to the list), at least not without asking first. There's probably a reason for someone not wanting their reply made public (otherwise they wouldn't have gone off-list) and it's rude to publish a private exchange. Cheers Zé --
Re: Mail Etiquette: Reply above or below
Johannes Thyssen Tishman writes: > Hi, Hello, > When I reply to an email I do so above the senders message, however I > see many people in the mailing lists replying below it. Is this the > preferred way or just preference? Thanks. Yes, there are "top-posting", "bottom posting" and "inline posting", "inline posting" is the preferred way. See: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mailing_list_etiquette
Re: Mail Etiquette: Reply above or below
On Tue, Mar 7, 2023 at 10:37 AM Johannes Thyssen Tishman wrote: > > Hi, > > When I reply to an email I do so above the senders message, however I see > many people in the mailing lists replying below it. Is this the preferred way > or just preference? Thanks. > Someone way smarter than me said this: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Why is top-posting such a bad thing? Top-posting. What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? -- chs
Re: Mail Etiquette: Reply above or below
On Tue, Mar 07, 2023 at 09:36:10AM +, Johannes Thyssen Tishman wrote: > Hi, > > When I reply to an email I do so above the senders message, however I > see many people in the mailing lists replying below it. Is this the > preferred way or just preference? Thanks. > > Kind regards, > Johannes For OpenBSD's mailing lists, the netiquette rules are clearly presented here https://www.openbsd.org/mail.html. Another unwritten rule (and not exclusive to these lists, I'd say) is that if someone replies off-list you *don't* reply back through the list (i.e. you don't "pull" the reply back in to the list), at least not without asking first. There's probably a reason for someone not wanting their reply made public (otherwise they wouldn't have gone off-list) and it's rude to publish a private exchange. Cheers Zé --
Re: Mail Etiquette: Reply above or below
2023-03-07T09:52:48Z 宋文武 : > Johannes Thyssen Tishman writes: > >> Hi, > > Hello, > >> When I reply to an email I do so above the senders message, however I >> see many people in the mailing lists replying below it. Is this the >> preferred way or just preference? Thanks. > > Yes, there are "top-posting", "bottom posting" and "inline posting", > "inline posting" is the preferred way. Understood! Thank you very much :) > See: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mailing_list_etiquette
Re: Mail Etiquette: Reply above or below
On Tue, Mar 07, 2023 at 09:36:10AM +, Johannes Thyssen Tishman wrote: > > When I reply to an email I do so above the senders message, however I see > many people in the mailing lists replying below it. Is this the preferred way > or just preference? Thanks. The traditional style is to quote only the parts of the previous message(s) that you are writing in respose to. If you are commenting on several parts of a previous exchange, the convention would be to offer your own input in several blocks, directly following the parts you are responding to. For whatever reason, Microsoft's Outlook or possibly earlier Microsoft mail client products dragged in a convention of quoting the whole thread (even though those early clients did not in fact have the thread concept) and putting new text on top. I think this would point to my preference at least. Cue my 2011 rant about same, enjoy: https://bsdly.blogspot.com/2011/02/problem-isnt-email-its-microsoft.html All the best, Peter -- Peter N. M. Hansteen, member of the first RFC 1149 implementation team https://bsdly.blogspot.com/ https://www.bsdly.net/ https://www.nuug.no/ "Remember to set the evil bit on all malicious network traffic" delilah spamd[29949]: 85.152.224.147: disconnected after 42673 seconds.
