Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 15:46:44 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> Cc: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, rob <rob@pythonemproject.com>, "chat@freebsd.org" <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Bottom-quoting (was Re: My friends were amazed at FreeBSD...) Message-ID: <3CF165D4.A7C8E6F4@mindspring.com> References: <20020524143036.C67484@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20020524164101.P51722-100000@muheleja.eenet.ee> <20020524163603.L81843@lpt.ens.fr> <3CEECD6A.5E9BB6A6@pythonemproject.com> <20020525175149.A69827@lpt.ens.fr> <15601.2665.379231.456776@guru.mired.org> <20020526173949.GA230@lpt.ens.fr> <15601.10022.167754.574044@guru.mired.org> <20020526183504.GA472@lpt.ens.fr>
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Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > You haven't said why it's wrong to bottom-quote (apart from the > bandwidth issue). You claim that it's as "annoying" as top-quoting an > entire post, which is strange, since if it's bottom-quoted you're not > forced to look at it. It's annoying because it repeats a block of information which has already been seen in that form. The repeated information is only interesting if its form is broken up for the purposes of commentary. Consider that the reading of mailing lists is asynchronus. Thus, if you top-copy an entire message and respond to it, the average reader sees: Message #1 Message #1 Message #2 The bottom-quoting is also irrelevent, for two reasons; the first is similar to that above, asyncronicity: Message #1 Message #2 Message #1 The second reason is often stated as "bandwidth"; in reality, it's because the common practice is to comment on an issue *after* you have read about the issue being commented upon. Thus there is an expectation of: [<statement>] <quote> <statement> Which means that you end up re-reading all of "Message #1" following "Message #2", and then there's no payoff for having done so. You're cheating us out of further comments, after making us read because the format promises further comments, is what's annoying. If you were to type, rather than to rely on your mail client for, your signature block, then the problem would disappear. I occasionally bottom-quote. My mail client encourages the behaviour because it was written by an idiot to have three settings, all inappropriate for mailing list ettiquite, and the one that promotes bottom-quoting is the least offensive of the three. But when I do this, I always add my signature after my last statement. I have seen other people do this as well. Basically, your signature block acts as an "End Of File" marker, after which you are not continuing to request your reader's attention. I have actually seen only one instance of someone complaining about someone "bottom-quoting", with this signature marker in place (they were compalining about Mike Smith "bottom-quoting", in which he ended his reponse in the middle of a quote, but did not put two blank lines following the signature). Business letters and other so-called "snail mail" has evolved certain formate structures for the data contained therein so that people can operate with certain assumptions, thereby making their lives easier. Email has done the same, even if people have been slow to recognize this fact. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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