Re: Top posting, yet another view
On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 03:48:28PM -0400, Andrew Schulman wrote:
> >> be getting out of hand :)
> >> us a lecture on top posting sometime soon? It seems to
> >> Isn't some authoritative voice on the list going to give
> >
> > My point (with all do respect and no insult intended): You may not like top
> > posting, but all of us on the 'net, even in technical groups like this, are
> > dealing more and more with newcomers to the Internet. We can try to educate
> > them, but things are changing. Maybe instead of judging others and expecting
> > everyone to conform, we should *ALL* keep an open mind, otherwise we might
> > find others are being as judgemental of us as we are of others.
>
> I don't see that this should require judging others, or even being
> impolite. It's just a matter of informing newbies what the standard
> practices are, and that there are good, time-tested reasons for those
> practices. No hassle or judgment, just education.
>
When I first started with Debian (from RH), I was drawn to it by the
useful answers that I saw being offered on this list. I top-posted
once, and was gently corrected by one of the people who was a quite
prolific provider of good answers at that time. Since then I have come
to prefer bottom posting, and I think people who are on this list in
order to get answers should realize that the people who give answers
really, mostly, prefer bottom posting. These people are the resource
that makes this list worthwhile. I think we should all try to give
these people some consideration _before_ one of them becomes cranky
and triggers a thread like this. This thread is such a waste of time.
Be nice to the answer givers and you will be rewarded. Dis them and
they will go away and all of us are then losers.
A second line of thought about top posting: I can imagine that top
posting might be appropriate on some types of email lists. I have
never found a topic in which I was interested for which I felt top
posting was appropriate. But that is more an indication of my
restricting my interest to rational discourse, rather than a rejection
of top posting in general. I'm just bored by discussions of topics for
which it might be appropriate.
JM2\cent
--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@mesanetworks.net
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