I have obviously started something here....
All I can say is that when I file paper invoices, bills, letters, payslips
and all other bumph I put the most recent on top - these being the ones I
am most likely to want to refer to again - and the ones at the bottom can be
discarded when the pile gets too big.
[And in fact I would be happy to do it either way - I just wish that we
would all agree on which way.....].
It seems that there isn't really any protocol and not much hope of
pursuading people to adhere to it if there is. As for netiquette
well..........
Anyway a happy Easter, Spring Festival, Beltane, Royal Wedding or whatever
any of you may be minded to celebrate or not at this time. I am off on
holiday.
Monica
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eugene C. Braig IV" <brai...@osu.edu>
To: "'Vihuelalist'" <vihuela@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 7:10 PM
Subject: [VIHUELA] Re: list - protocol
Alas, the tyrannical giant Microsoft and its forced default of
top-replying
so dominates the universe of electronic communication that I fear there is
no easy way back to a rational conversational civility. This note was
typed
using MS Outlook (with a tear in the eye for the memory of Eudora).
Eugene
-----Original Message-----
From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On
Behalf Of R. Mattes
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 2:06 PM
To: Monica Hall; Martyn Hodgson
Cc: Vihuelalist
Subject: [VIHUELA] Re: list - protocol
On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 17:42:10 +0100, Monica Hall forwarded
> From: [1]Martyn Hodgson
>
> As said, the reply at the top is usual (and historic!) practice. But
> it's also always a good idea to cut and paste in the relevant
> section
> one is queying/amplifying if the original is long
This is simply wrong. Sorry, but the "historic" way to quote in Usenet
(way before mailing list were common) was either bottom-post or
interleaved. I still have my old copy of my university's version of
'Zen and the art of Internet' which teaches the art of interleaved
quoting (and a lot of other netiquette ... what happened to the net,
sigh!). Top-posting was brought to us by AOL (and later Microsoft) :
their meassage clients had no means of qutoing the original and put
the cursor above the original message text when replying.
Since most of these "new" AOL users had no clue about haow to behave
in an online community Top-posting quickly became associated with
rude behavior ... Here's an old signature joke from back then:
A: Because it reverses the natural order of conversations and makes
it confusing as to who posted what.
Q: Why is that so annoying?
A: Top posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing about mailing lists and Usenet?
Monica Hall again:
> All I can say is that I agree with this. The problem arises when
> several people reply to a message consecutively, some at the top
> and some at the bottom.
>
> The important thing is to keep the discussion in a logical
> sequence which everyone can follow.
Yes, I totally agree here, top-posting in reply to an interleaved
message is plain and simply rude. And, btw. one is supposed to _trim_
the quoted sections, blindly replying with the full message of the
original post is rude as well. Why? Because it really blows up the
size of my message box. And it's anoying that, when searching for a
post, a lot of not so relevant mails show up, only because old quotes
still linger at the deep bottom of these messages.
Cheers, Ralf Mattes
--
R. Mattes -
Hochschule fuer Musik Freiburg
r...@inm.mh-freiburg.de
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