Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On 2/25/2012 9:00 PM, Charles Haynes wrote: O RLY? YA VERILY Why does social signalling matter? One geek conceit is that only the semantic content matters, and that the message is the medium. Non-geeks find this amusingly naive verging on childish. Us geeks are (stereotypically) not very good at reading signals. If you are blind to an entire range of signals, of course you are likely to discount their importance. Also, a lot of signalling is not inherent, and takes practice to learn, detect and apply. Non-geeks spend a lot more time doing this, I suspect. One side-effect is that when geeks attempt textual signalling techniques such as dry irony, they overdo it to the point where readers assume they're being completely sincere. This happens to me far too often, and I really should know better by now. -Taj.
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 8:07 AM, Charles Haynes charles.hay...@gmail.com wrote: You mean it doesn't thread the way you like. It does do threading just not in the model you're used to. Which could be the case as I'm more familiar and comfortable with the way offline mail clients handle and display threads. That pattern makes it easy to follow various conversation forks. If the Gmail WebUI does this differently, I'd be interested in understanding how it does so, and reading up on it. For example, the Y! and Zimbra WebUIs tend to mimic the offline client threading model. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
Ok, so teach me. If I'm relplying to multiple mails in a thread, how do I reply to individual thoughts in these mails without 'copying and pasting' from the respective mails? Adit.
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 6:35 AM, Aditya Kapil blue...@gmail.com wrote: Ok, so teach me. If I'm relplying to multiple mails in a thread, how do I reply to individual thoughts in these mails without 'copying and pasting' from the respective mails? Why not reply to each individual email you are replying to? Why must you combine your replies to multiple people into one response? Thaths -- Homer: Hey, what does this job pay? Carl: Nuthin'. Homer: D'oh! Carl: Unless you're crooked. Homer: Woo-hoo! Sudhakar Chandra Slacker Without Borders
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 06:29, Suresh Ramasubramanian sur...@hserus.net wrote: So while you may not want to use anything else, or someone else may not want to move beyond mutt and emacs (both of which I use and top post with too..) - there's little or no connection between the client and whether or not you top post, except for a limited number of, mostly smartphone, clients. Death to BB (more for thread-breaking than for forcing top-posts.)
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
I'm still unsure why top posting has anything to do with Netiquette. Top posting is what a lot of people are comfortable with, and is a commonly accepted style. Its just an alternate way of doing things. Trying to say that its bad etiquette looks like an excuse to talk down to others and reinforce your own superiority. Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone -Original Message- From: Suresh Ramasubramanian sur...@hserus.net Sender: silklist-bounces+thewall=gmail@lists.hserus.net Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 00:59:07 To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Reply-To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Subject: Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit) Gmail on the web has its own idiosyncracies and some context sensitive advertising that occasionally tends to the bizzarre So while you may not want to use anything else, or someone else may not want to move beyond mutt and emacs (both of which I use and top post with too..) - there's little or no connection between the client and whether or not you top post, except for a limited number of, mostly smartphone, clients. --Original Message-- From: Srini RamaKrishnan Sender: silklist-bounces+suresh=hserus@lists.hserus.net To: silklist@lists.hserus.net ReplyTo: silklist@lists.hserus.net Subject: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit) Sent: Feb 25, 2012 00:45 On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 7:50 PM, Heather Madrone heat...@madrone.com wrote: This is pushing me in the direction of top-posting. Why not push you in the direction of a new email program? What features are becoming important in email programs these days? I know that for me the decision to move to gmail / the cloud was made once I'd had enough of the silliness of pine/eudora/mulberry/outlook/mutt/thunderbird madness. I have Apple Mail configured to read gmail on some of my computers, but for the most part I never use it. -- srs (blackberry)
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On 2/25/2012 6:22 PM, thew...@gmail.com wrote: I'm still unsure why top posting has anything to do with Netiquette. Top posting is what a lot of people are comfortable with, and is a commonly accepted style. Its just an alternate way of doing things. Trying to say that its bad etiquette looks like an excuse to talk down to others and reinforce your own superiority. It's an argument that applies equally well to SMS-speak in email. There's no loss in semantic content - after a fashion - so why does syntax matter? -Taj.
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On 25-Feb-12 7:37 PM, Sirtaj Singh Kang wrote: I'm still unsure why top posting has anything to do with Netiquette. Top posting is what a lot of people are comfortable with, and is a commonly accepted style. Its just an alternate way of doing things. Trying to say that its bad etiquette looks like an excuse to talk down to others and reinforce your own superiority. It's an argument that applies equally well to SMS-speak in email. There's no loss in semantic content - after a fashion - so why does syntax matter? You only *think* you're joking [1]. Speaking for myself, I prefer the interleaved style. Wearing my admin hat, I would prefer that listmembers do not top-post, but will reluctantly accept that many (mostly mobile) clients do not give them that choice. It doesn't help matters that the two most commonly used MUAs, Microsoft Outlook and gmail, all but force you to top-post. I shall continue to hold this opinion (that text-only, trimmed, and interleaved posts are the most information-efficient; and the most respectful of the reader's time) but I also have a threshold of diminishing returns for the amount of times I want to remind people about it - otherwise good citizens of the list (and also obvious technophobes) get more leeway in this matter. I suspect I sound like the internet equivalent of the Oldest Member [2], talking about the endless September [3]. Shrug. C'357 14 V13. Udhay [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpagev=YkwQSeijBsk#t=102s [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_Member [3] http://www.nyupress.org/netwars/textonly/pages/chapter01/ch01_.html -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 10:07 PM, Sirtaj Singh Kang sir...@sirtaj.net wrote: It's an argument that applies equally well to SMS-speak in email. There's no loss in semantic content - O RLY? after a fashion - so why does syntax matter? Why does social signalling matter? One geek conceit is that only the semantic content matters, and that the message is the medium. Non-geeks find this amusingly naive verging on childish. -- Charles
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 4:52 AM, thew...@gmail.com wrote: I'm still unsure why top posting has anything to do with Netiquette. Top posting is what a lot of people are comfortable with, and is a commonly accepted style. Its just an alternate way of doing things. Trying to say that its bad etiquette looks like an excuse to talk down to others and reinforce your own superiority. But you said in an earlier thread that you find bottom posting gauche and insensitive. Its difficult to read. That sounds to me like you are saying a particular posting style - interleaved posting - is bad etiquette. Setting aside your visceral reaction to people that advocate one or the other, please explain to me why interleaved posts are more difficult to read. Thaths -- Homer: Hey, what does this job pay? Carl: Nuthin'. Homer: D'oh! Carl: Unless you're crooked. Homer: Woo-hoo! Sudhakar ChandraSlacker Without Borders
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
Doesn't answer the question as to why top-posting is bad netiquette / etiquette. Are IT guys just lazy scrollers? Or have they some secret knowledge of techie anachronismic inefficiencies that we mere mortals are not aware of? On Feb 25, 2012 9:38 PM, Thaths tha...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 4:52 AM, thew...@gmail.com wrote: I'm still unsure why top posting has anything to do with Netiquette. Top posting is what a lot of people are comfortable with, and is a commonly accepted style. Its just an alternate way of doing things. Trying to say that its bad etiquette looks like an excuse to talk down to others and reinforce your own superiority. But you said in an earlier thread that you find bottom posting gauche and insensitive. Its difficult to read. That sounds to me like you are saying a particular posting style - interleaved posting - is bad etiquette. Setting aside your visceral reaction to people that advocate one or the other, please explain to me why interleaved posts are more difficult to read. Thaths -- Homer: Hey, what does this job pay? Carl: Nuthin'. Homer: D'oh! Carl: Unless you're crooked. Homer: Woo-hoo! Sudhakar ChandraSlacker Without Borders
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On 25-Feb-12 9:46 PM, Aditya Kapil wrote: Doesn't answer the question as to why top-posting is bad netiquette / etiquette. Are IT guys just lazy scrollers? Or have they some secret knowledge of techie anachronismic inefficiencies that we mere mortals are not aware of? Since this has been discussed so many times over the years on this list, I am not sure what prompted this question now, especially given I answered it yet again in my last post. (resists temptation to include the entire post to make a point) I shall continue to hold this opinion (that text-only, trimmed, and interleaved posts are the most information-efficient; and the most respectful of the reader's time) For slightly more detail, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Choosing_the_proper_posting_style Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 6:29 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian sur...@hserus.net wrote: Gmail on the web has its own idiosyncracies and some context sensitive advertising that occasionally tends to the bizzarre That the Gmail WebUI doesn't allow any form of threading is still a sore point. And, although I use the WebUI (and, the app), to avoid chunks of email folders all over disks, it still is an ugly path to a conversation. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 8:16 AM, Aditya Kapil blue...@gmail.com wrote: Doesn't answer the question as to why top-posting is bad netiquette / etiquette. Are IT guys just lazy scrollers? Or have they some secret knowledge of techie anachronismic inefficiencies that we mere mortals are not aware of? I see you have chosen not to follow my suggestion of setting aside your visceral reactions to people that advocate a particular style of posting. Be that as it may... Top posting used to be considered bad etiquette because it was perceived as laziness on the part of the poster. Top posting shifts the cognitive load from the writer to the reader. This is not too big a problem when the email thread in question is being exchanged between a few people. But is perceived to be inconsiderate when the load is imposed on newsgroups/mailing lists (such as silklist) with large readerships. When there are intense discussions with nuanced arguments with a lot of back and forth happening, I find the quality of arguments in interleaved posts to be higher than the quality of top posts. Top-posted replies generally (and I say generally, because there are notable exceptions to the rule such as bonobashi's posts) have the tendency to pick one or two arguments being presented and shooting off on tangential directions (See: secret knowledge, talking down, etc.). Interleaved replies, on the other hand, tend to lead to longish arguments with lots of back and forth about each item being addressed. I urge you to go back to the Acquavit thread and test my contention. That thread has a good mixture of interleaved replied and top-posted replies. Thaths
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On 2/25/2012 8:44 PM, Udhay Shankar N wrote: It doesn't help matters that the two most commonly used MUAs, Microsoft Outlook and gmail, all but force you to top-post. I'm using Thunderbird at the moment and it's also pretty bad. It's likely that there's some obvious trick that I'm missing, but I have a really hard time trimming quoted messages even in text-only mode. -Taj.
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
Apropos to nothing but the subject of this thread, I rarely ever top post (unless from the mobile) because I used to be a techie and (also) am used to very long, disconnected conversations within the same email or post. Which is silly if you think about it but I'm too lazy to start different threads for each segue. Now I hardly even care what I receive, top posted, interleaved or top quoted, even SMS lingo is fine as long as I get it. It's sad, perhaps, but spelling, punctuation and grammar don't bother me much anymore; my posts on my blog reflect that as well. Maybe it's the move to non-techie-ness?
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
Sirtaj Singh Kang [2012-02-25 23:00]: I'm using Thunderbird at the moment and it's also pretty bad. It's likely that there's some obvious trick that I'm missing, but I have a really hard time trimming quoted messages even in text-only mode. What kind of problems? I see you're using Thunderbird v10.0.2, which I too use, and I haven't faced any problems. And all your posts, both from Thunderbird as well as from Apple Mail, seem to be properly trimmed. ~ Pranesh signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On 2/25/2012 11:42 PM, Pranesh Prakash wrote: [snip] What kind of problems? Usually when I aggressively remove large chunks of text, the quoting indent disappears and the remained quoted text becomes part of the message body. This happens more often near the start of the message, as if I'm deleting some hidden formatting code. I end up undoing and redoing the deletion a number of times until I manage to get it right. I realize I'm not explaining it as well as I should, sorry. -Taj.
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
Sirtaj Singh Kang [2012-02-26 00:15]: Usually when I aggressively remove large chunks of text, the quoting indent disappears and the remained quoted text becomes part of the message body. That's odd, because you're replying in plaintext and not HTML. (The quoting indent that shows up for you, I'm guessing, is a '' and not a solid line on the left.) Given that such is the case, the problem might be that you're using format-flowed, and when you hit 'reply' the line doesn't get wrapped with a new '' on each line. (In other words, there is a single '' for each paragraph instead of a '' on each line.) Also, for proper quoting, leave space of at least a single empty line between the quoted text and your response (which you already seem to be doing). ~ Pranesh signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 11:30:52PM +0530, Deepak Shenoy wrote: Apropos to nothing but the subject of this thread, I rarely ever top post (unless from the mobile) because I used to be a techie and (also) am used to very long, disconnected conversations within the same email or post. Which is silly if you think about it but I'm too lazy to start different threads for each segue. Now I hardly even care what I receive, top posted, interleaved or top quoted, even SMS lingo is fine as long as I get it. It's sad, perhaps, but spelling, punctuation and grammar don't bother me much anymore; my posts on my blog reflect that as well. Maybe it's the move to non-techie-ness? Willkommen im Neanderthal. With time, you'll get used to the grunts and crude signs.
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 12:36 AM, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay sankarshan.mukhopadh...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 6:29 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian sur...@hserus.net wrote: Gmail on the web has its own idiosyncracies and some context sensitive advertising that occasionally tends to the bizzarre That the Gmail WebUI doesn't allow any form of threading You mean it doesn't thread the way you like. It does do threading just not in the model you're used to. is still a sore point. And, although I use the WebUI (and, the app), to avoid chunks of email folders all over disks, it still is an ugly path to a conversation. If you include the parts of the message you are replying to, and interleave your responses, I find the GMail model works pretty well. I hated it when I first encountered it (and hated that I couldn't delete messages) but now I find it natural. -- Charles
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On 26-Feb-12 12:15 AM, Sirtaj Singh Kang wrote: Usually when I aggressively remove large chunks of text, the quoting indent disappears and the remained quoted text becomes part of the message body. This happens more often near the start of the message, as if I'm deleting some hidden formatting code. I end up undoing and redoing the deletion a number of times until I manage to get it right. Taj, One of the links here [1] may be useful to debug this. Udhay [1] http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plain_text_e-mail_%28Thunderbird%29 -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
If you include the parts of the message you are replying to, and interleave your responses, I find the GMail model works pretty well. I hated it when I first encountered it (and hated that I couldn't delete messages) but now I find it natural. But you can, no? I suspect you already know but if I pull down that little down arrow on the top right hand corner of an individual message inside a thread I get a delete option for only that message (not the whole conversation)
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On 26-Feb-12 9:01 AM, Deepak Shenoy wrote: But you can, no? I suspect you already know but if I pull down that little down arrow on the top right hand corner of an individual message inside a thread I get a delete option for only that message (not the whole conversation) The delete option in gmail was introduced a few years after the service started. (BTW Charles used to be a google employee so has likely been using gmail for longer than the outside world). Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 11:31 AM, Deepak Shenoy deepakshe...@gmail.com wrote: If you include the parts of the message you are replying to, and interleave your responses, I find the GMail model works pretty well. I hated it when I first encountered it (and hated that I couldn't delete messages) but now I find it natural. But you can, no? You can *now* :) my use of the past tense was not just about how I felt then but also about the capability then. Both my feeling and the capability have changed. I was there during the fiery internal debates about adding a Delete functionality, with one side (mostly techies) arguing strongly that it was not needed and if you'd just shift your paradigm you'd see how great it was that you didn't need one; and the other side (mostly user experience and support people) arguing just as strongly that users weren't wrong and you shouldn't *force* them to adopt a new paradigm, that you should offer it and if it really was superior they'd adopt it. Google, not being Apple, eventually bowed to the desire of the masses for the familiar rather than forcing their vision of the future on them. -- Charles
[silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 7:50 PM, Heather Madrone heat...@madrone.com wrote: This is pushing me in the direction of top-posting. Why not push you in the direction of a new email program? What features are becoming important in email programs these days? I know that for me the decision to move to gmail / the cloud was made once I'd had enough of the silliness of pine/eudora/mulberry/outlook/mutt/thunderbird madness. I have Apple Mail configured to read gmail on some of my computers, but for the most part I never use it.
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 8:15 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan che...@gmail.com wrote: I'd had enough of the silliness of pine/eudora/mulberry/outlook/mutt/thunderbird madness. Should really read: I'd had enough of the silliness of pine/eudora/mulberry/outlook/mutt/thunderbird data migration madness. Data migration was really the pain point - and then lots of email sitting in old disks - because I know I can get to it if I ever need it, but nothing ever made it so important that I had to have access to the old data.
Re: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit)
Gmail on the web has its own idiosyncracies and some context sensitive advertising that occasionally tends to the bizzarre So while you may not want to use anything else, or someone else may not want to move beyond mutt and emacs (both of which I use and top post with too..) - there's little or no connection between the client and whether or not you top post, except for a limited number of, mostly smartphone, clients. --Original Message-- From: Srini RamaKrishnan Sender: silklist-bounces+suresh=hserus@lists.hserus.net To: silklist@lists.hserus.net ReplyTo: silklist@lists.hserus.net Subject: [silk] Netiquette / Top posting (was: Re: aqvavit) Sent: Feb 25, 2012 00:45 On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 7:50 PM, Heather Madrone heat...@madrone.com wrote: This is pushing me in the direction of top-posting. Why not push you in the direction of a new email program? What features are becoming important in email programs these days? I know that for me the decision to move to gmail / the cloud was made once I'd had enough of the silliness of pine/eudora/mulberry/outlook/mutt/thunderbird madness. I have Apple Mail configured to read gmail on some of my computers, but for the most part I never use it. -- srs (blackberry)
