Hi :) No, i wasn't saying that anyone was deliberately unfriendly but i think we need to have better ways of dealing with top-posters because we often give an appearance of rudeness.
People that do top-post are unlikely to be aware that there is another way. Everyone they communicate with and everyone those people communicate with all top-post as Jean-Francois just agreed. If they get an apparently empty email then they might well assume that it was a mistake. Mistakes happen. When triaging a stack of emails that becomes a "delete now or deal with later". Why spend time looking for something that 'never happens'? Why scroll to the bottom of a thread when in all their experience that is only ancient history? On the other hand people that bottom post are usually aware that there is an alternative. Any editing can change the meaning or context of a previous posting, sometimes even reversing the meaning. Keeping old posts is great for checking context if something seems odd about the latest post or if the thread is unfamiliar somehow = it is not meant to be read through each time but it is helpful if it is easily accessible. Steve had a good point. Some people use one method and other people use a different one. There is surely enough room in this world for all. We need to be good at dealing with top-posters but what exactly does that mean? Regards from Tom :) ________________________________ From: Jean-Francois Nifenecker <jean-francois.nifenec...@laposte.net> To: users@libreoffice.org Sent: Wed, 16 February, 2011 17:28:34 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] top- or bottom- quoting Hello Dave, Le 16/02/2011 12:44, Tom Davies a écrit : > > Sadly we have to deal with the world as it is rather than the way we would like > it to be. Sure. Does this mean we won't try to educate them? > Far more people use the wonderful MicroSoft products such as Outlook > than use all the alternatives added together. Indeed. > > Please can we try to be less unfriendly to people that are new in here? Am I? Sorry if my message seemed like that, because it was not the intend. > Top > posters (first timers asking questions) need to be responded to at the top of > the thread. Otherwise they might assume there was no answer in the reply. If you read this very message, you can see that I've edited it in many pieces that are very likely to be noticed. I guess ;) So, top- or bottom-posting is just a part of the "mail-user-education": editing the original message to get to the point is also very important. The sender must think he has to be read, and understood (otherwise what's the point at posting at all?). So eliminating the useless parts -- which are available upper in the thread anyway -- is a requirement. > The first thing that most people see is the top of the email and > almost all our responses fall into the "leave to later or delete straight-away" > category. This is what message editing is all about. > Yes, they don't do thing 'our way'. Obviously 'our way' is the only 'right >way' > but that doesn't necessarily mean we don't want to help them. Or does it? No, of course. This is my point: bottom-posting + editing and, from time to time explaining. I don't think I ever ignored any message just because it was top-answered. Cheers, -- Jean-Francois Nifenecker, Bordeaux -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity *** -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***