On 1/23/2014 11:21 AM, Leo Donahue wrote:
On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 12:08 PM, André Warnier <a...@ice-sa.com> wrote:
it seems that we're spending more time lately asking people to not
top-post, than actually providing answers to their questions.
So I have a few suggestions of my own :
- have the list software add a message in *bold* to all messages, indicating
that top posts will be *ignored* ?
- just ignore top-posts ?
- drop the rule ?
Does this topic go back to the usenet days of the early 80s? Top
posting vs bottom posting?
It is so customary to simply reply to people in the MS Outlook world
that all of those people get used to top posting, because they know
nothing different, until they come here.
I'm getting used to bottom posting, but it drives my co-workers crazy
and is not proper form where I work. I think this we might be chasing
the wind here.
Leo
There are probably lots of reasons for top-posting, and I don't think we
can lay the blame on the MS Outlook world. The people I work with use a
mixture of Thunderbird, web-based interfaces, and Outlook.
Every one of them top-posts :-(.
I think top-posting says a lot about the thought process of the poster.
To me it says, "my issue, problem, answer, concern is of paramount
importance. You should remember everything about my issue. After all, I
remember everything about my issue."
The attitude is probably not malicious, but more along the lines of a
lack of perspective.
Two things to consider when posting to a public mailing list:
1. There are lots of topics - people don't keep up with all of them
2. Many people have more pressing concerns - your issue isn't one of
them
In a work environment, top-posting may be rational since hopefully
you're getting mail on issues of primary importance.
In an open mailing list, bottom-posting or in-line posting makes sense
because contributors are doing this on a voluntary basis (beats
rewriting a build process in Maven for example :-p). Also, your concern
is most likely not their concern. In short, the contributors aren't
spending as many cycles on the issue as the original poster is.
This goes along with providing a complete description of your
environment and how you arrived at the problem. Within a work
environment, there's shared knowledge. In a public mailing list, no one
knows but the original poster.
Oh, and brevity is probably a good model (shoot me now).
. . . . just my two cents
/mde/
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