Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 17:10:38 +0530 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> To: "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog@freebsd.org> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Why top-posting is bad Message-ID: <20040827114038.GA2453@online.fr> In-Reply-To: <20040822015558.GO92256@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <41248C2F.8020401@quadspeed.com> <417F9703-F1DC-11D8-AE79-000393BB56F2@HiWAAY.net> <007001c485ec$9d3bbb10$3300a8c0@verizon.net> <9FDC1E28-F1E2-11D8-AE79-000393BB56F2@HiWAAY.net> <20040819134840.GA3104@online.fr> <20040822015558.GO92256@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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Replying late because I've been moving. Greg 'groggy' Lehey said on Aug 22, 2004 at 11:25:58: > [Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html] > > On Thursday, 19 August 2004 at 9:48:40 -0400, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > > David Kelly said on Aug 19, 2004 at 08:21:05: > >> Providing an introduction to a forwarded message is about the only > >> acceptable time to top-post, as I am doing right now. > > > > Two observations: > > > > 1. While top-posting is bad in the mailing list context, it is often > > necessary in the corporate context. It took me a while to > > appreciate this, but it's much easier for a secretary or a customer > > support person to look through the bottom of an email for *all* > > related correspondence than to dig through (possibly weeks-old or > > months-old) email. You may have quoted what *you* think is > > "relevant", but maybe you unknowingly omitted something important, > > or maybe you didn't but the reader wants to be sure of that too. > > If you quoted everything, you may as well top-post, rather than > > force your reader to wade through pages of old stuff before getting > > to your point. > > This is a marginally valid point. The trouble is that most people are > only semi-literate when it comes to mail. They don't *understand* > that it's a good idea to limit the size of the messages that people > send. They usually also don't care, because it's so difficult with > the tools at their disposal, and they don't believe that there are > easier ways to do it. > > This leaves me with a problem at work: people send messages which are > in arbitrary order, which have format breakage, and which include a > lot of irrelevant text. It frequently takes me a long time just to > understand what they're referring to. How do I reply? I have to > reply, because it's part of my job, but should I descend to their > level of illiteracy? > > I've made the decision that I should not. I reformat the messages > before replying to them (thus the message > > [Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html] > > at the top of such replies and First comment: you included this message at the top of this mail, but the only difference in format I see between your message and mine is the quoting ">" marks. Why your "format recovered" message? Have you considered that some people, who don't see an obvious formatting problem with their mail, may consider this message offensive? (I don't, because I've corresponded with you before, but I can see that people might, and FreeBSD already has a sufficient reputation for offensive members.) Or, if there was indeed some subtle formatting problem in my message that you've corrected, shouldn't you be polite enough to tell me what it is? Your webpage certainly doesn't. > When replying to this message, please take care not to mutilate the > original text. > For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/email.html > > at the bottom). This may take some time, but at least I can then > understand what's going on (most of the time; some messages leave me > mystified), and the result is legible. I get plenty of messages that are top-posted continuously all the way for 10 generations. I see no problem in following the context. I can even appreciate that, if the quoted messages are a few weeks or months old, (a) it is better to quote them fully rather than partially or not at all, (b) it is better to quote them at the bottom and say what you want to say on the top. I agree this does not apply to FreeBSD lists, but most people may not realise that unless it's (politely) explained to them. Anyway, top-posting isn't unheard-of in FreeBSDland either: I've seen JKH and Scott Long do it, among others. > better. But sometimes it's worth expressing the fact that people are > more likely to get (voluntary) answers if they express themselves > well; and that includes the presentation of their text. That can be explained politely, rather than saying "Top-posters won't be honoured with a reply". Rahul
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