OT: netiquette (Was: Re: ssh chroot on debian documentation)

[Matej Kovac <deblist@telnet.sk>]

On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 03:09:30PM +0100, Lo�Minier wrote:
>  Regards,
> 
> Robert Vangel <vangelr@rfgt.net> - Tue, Nov 02, 2004:
> 
> > Can people please be more careful when creating new messages, not to hit
> > reply to a message then removing everything & starting again.
> 
>  Because it breaks the natural flow of conversation.
> 
>  Why is top-posting so bad?
> 

because it breaks natural reading flow...? :)

[long:]

now I reply to just two "nested" emails. you have replied fine
(if I forget the Regards on top, avoid it as well), so when I
reply to mails above, and somone reads it after me, he can read
it as a book, or news-paper or other text, from top to bottom. if
you would reply above Robert, and I would reply above you, somone
would start reading my email with "because...", stopped and
browsed down after my text he didn't read just to find out
what/why I say "because..." and if you would be just little bit
out of context, reader would skip even your text to read Robert's
question. then go back to your text above, once he know what are
you talking about. and finaly, once he reads your reply, he will
know why I started with "because". this order is not natural.

here are some notes I usualy cannot find in "google:[email]
netiquette":

posting your answer below question is important for readers. of
course, you should strip enough from long text so quotes aren't
90% of your reply, mail as well as you should start writing at
column zero (or column one if you are not programmer:) so we all
can see the text you reply to aligned with your reply. usage of
fancy quoting should be avoided, especialy quoting with multiple
charcters instead of ^gt;^nbsp; (I use carret instead of amp
because of crapy html aware MUAs). your paragraphs should be
separate by one line and not indented. and you definitely should
use capitals (however, my shift is constanly broken until I
defnitely need it for "I" :). also, you should avoid custom quote
header, simple default of mutt is most common and best. of
course, avoid the quote header in your natural language, mainly
if it contains diacritics or some weird accented characters, and
of course, try not to use it in your "From: " line, reader might
simply miss your iso-8859-? (or other enc) console or even gui
font, so they will not see your doble accute o, u or slashed l,
or whatever other character a mankind ever invented. be ascii.
(it breaks my mutt now - yes, I'm in migration to total utf8, but
if you wrote your name in asci, I could type your name in your
preffered ascii format, but now I cant). last point: if you think
somone might reply to your mail... do not use 79 chars in line.
79+2 quotes would wrap and... so wrap at 60+ and never type
something without line breaks, unles you are pasting _exact_
output of some command or log file etc :)

if others have some more points worth to submit to some
netiquette site, I'd like to sumarize all comments and submit
them... (rantmode)email is here for over 30 years and less and
less people can write... (/rantmode)

-- 
matej kovac
deblist@telnet.sk