Scott wrote:

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

:)

(I bet a bunch of other people wanted to do that.)

Sorta like using a date format of MM/DD/YY, huh?

On Thu, 2008-05-15 at 16:34 -0500, Aaron Griffin wrote:

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 4:24 PM, R. Dale Thomas

...

Sorta like using a date format of MM/DD/YY, huh?

inches. fluid ounces. grams.

This reminds me of something. There is no such locale as "international"? ie English as language and YYYY-MM-DD for dates and so on. Before my reinstall I made something like that myself, but would be nice to have something upstream and available on every system =) [Ohh, and we need top-posting for Outlook compatibility 8-)]

I understand that top posting is to do something like this:

Denis Alessandro wrote that: bla bla bla bla bla

And that's wrong because the e-mail list have the history so you don't have to copy part of the text, because the copy is available, the e-mail list have different net-etiquette rules. So you have to read first and then you answer WITHOUT copying parts of the e-mails in the thread, basicly :-) Cheers On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 1:05 AM, Denis Alessandro Altoe Falqueto < denisfalqueto@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 6:20 PM, Scott wrote:

...

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

:)

(I bet a bunch of other people wanted to do that.)

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 02:29:16PM -0500, Aaron Griffin wrote:

...

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 2:21 PM, Xavier wrote:

...

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/T/top-post.html

I'm not sure

...

What about using a consistent style, at least for one given ML? arch-general is really painful to read sometimes.

what you're talking about.

...

Thanks!

You must be crazy

-- Scott Robbins PGP keyID EB3467D6 ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 ) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6

Angel: You've never done this before. Look, it takes tremendous strength -- mental strength. Wesley: Resistence to suggestion. Yes, I understand that. I like to think of myself as possessing a certain... Angel: Wesley, you don't even have sales resistance. How many thigh masters do you own? Wesley: The second one was a free gift with my Buns of Steel.

Funny you top posting to bash top posting ;)

-- ------------------------------------------- Denis A. Altoe Falqueto -------------------------------------------

-- Angel Velasquez angvp @ irc.freenode.net Linux Counter: #359909

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 8:06 PM, Scott wrote:

Ok, to be serious for a minute, judging from a few posts, not everyone understands, so just to clarify for newcomers, or for anyone who doesn't have English as their first language. (Though many of the latter write better than we native speakers, but that's another thread.) :)

You old timers who know all this can skip the rest, it's a rehash of some common netiquette.

Top posting is posting your response above the post you are answering.

For example:

I write: I think Arch is great.

Someone responds by posting above it, so it looks like:

Yeah, you're right.

...

I think Arch is great

(that's assuming the responder's email handles quoting.)

One thing that can confuse people is that this is often the norm in business correspondence. It might even be preferable, if for example, the boss responds above a long detailed proposal, Yes, do it.

Whether or not that's really the best way, it is pretty accepted in business. You can't even blame MS mailers, since most mailers do start at the top of an email by default, including mutt. This also makes sense. You can read and respond.

On technical mailing lists, the preferred method is almost always what's called in line posting. I write.

I think Arch is great.

I like the fact that they have a small base install

You respond

...

I think Arch is great.

Yes, I do too.

...

I like the fact that they have a small base install.

I feel the same way, though sometimes, I miss having X installed and configured upon installation.

In other words, you reply to point A below point A and point B below point B, so it imitates a spoken conversation.

Two other points often overlooked by newcomers are trimming and thread hijacking. Trimming means to snip unneeded parts of an email. For example, if I write 10 lines explaining my work situation, but only the last two lines actually have my question, you snip the first 8 lines. This way, other people following the thread don't have to scroll through the entire story to see the question.

Thread hijacking is when you take a thread, for example, this one, then just change the subject line to start a new thread. MS email clients will make it look like a new thread, but many other clients pay attention to the actual headers, and will include your new thread as part of the old one. As many people won't even notice that, it's another common mistake.

So, just thought I'd clarify these three for folks who aren't aware of them, and folks who might not have realized that many of us were being silly, deliberately top posting while complaining about it.

Hopefully this is of use to some and those who already know it heeded the warning at the beginning and didn't read it. :)

Woah. /me blinks This should be wikified 8)

If everybody used Gmail this wouldn't be a problem :-) On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 5:35 AM, Scott wrote:

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 10:22:01PM -0500, Aaron Griffin wrote:

...

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 8:06 PM, Scott wrote:

...

...

Ok, to be serious for a minute, judging from a few posts, not everyone understands, so just to clarify for newcomers, or for anyone who doesn't have English as their first language. (Though many of the latter write better than we native speakers, but that's another thread.) :)

...

Woah. /me blinks

This should be wikified 8)

There's a much better article about it by a friend of mine, over at

http://linux.sgms-centre.com/misc/netiquette.php

He'd probably be ameneable to having it put on a wiki--if you like, I can ask him. (Though he'll be away for several days, so I might not get an answer for a little while. )

-- Scott Robbins PGP keyID EB3467D6 ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 ) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6

Xander: Calm may work for Locutus of the Borg here, but I'm freaked out, and I intend to stay that way.

On Friday 16 May 2008 10:00:17 gan lu wrote:

Yeah, I love gmail.

Mmmm gmail does NOT work the right way, it automatically top-posts, as you have done too. Damnshock -- Blog: damnshock.blogspot.com Fotolog: www.fotolog.com/damnshock

...

Mmmm gmail does NOT work the right way, it automatically top-posts, as you have done too. Another issue is that it's posting in the most hideous format you can use for email: HTML.

You might be interested in taking a look at Sup (http://sup.rubyforge.org/) which is a console-based email client that takes many ideas from Gmail (threading, archiving most stuff, labels, focus on search), but gets rid of top posting by default and doesn't do html messages, etc. I haven't actually set it up myself yet, but thought it's on my todo list. -- Aaron "ElasticDog" Schaefer

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 10:15:18AM +0200, Marc Deop i Argemí wrote:

On Friday 16 May 2008 10:00:17 gan lu wrote:

...

Yeah, I love gmail.

Mmmm gmail does NOT work the right way, it automatically top-posts, as you have done too.

My other complaint about gmail for mailing lists is that it won't give you your own post in an inbox. That is, if I post the first thing in a thread, I won't get back a copy. Last time I looked, they called this a feature, and despite several complaints, had no intention of changing it. I will get replies to my post. Interestingly enough, yahoogroups sticks so much stuff on the end of an email that gmail sometimes doesn't realize it's your original post. Even mutt top posts by default. That's fine, the cursor should start at the beginning of an email, so you can read it from top to bottom. -- Scott Robbins PGP keyID EB3467D6 ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 ) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6 Spike: You won. Alright? You came in and you killed them, and you took their land. That's what conquering nations do. It's what Caeser did, and he's not going around saying I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it.

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 8:35 AM, Sten Larsson wrote:

If everybody used Gmail this wouldn't be a problem :-)

But privacy would. And if you're going to complain that I use gmail, too, that's for public mailing lists only. My private mail goes to a secure address. Corrado

Angel Velásquez wrote:

I understand that top posting is to do something like this:

...

Denis Alessandro wrote that: bla bla bla bla bla

And that's wrong because the e-mail list have the history so you don't have to copy part of the text, because the copy is available, the e-mail list have different net-etiquette rules.

So you have to read first and then you answer WITHOUT copying parts of the e-mails in the thread, basicly :-)

Cheers

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 1:05 AM, Denis Alessandro Altoe Falqueto mailto:denisfalqueto@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 6:20 PM, Scott mailto:scottro@nyc.rr.com> wrote: > > A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. > Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? > A: Top-posting. > Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail? > > > :) > > (I bet a bunch of other people wanted to do that.) > > > > > On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 02:29:16PM -0500, Aaron Griffin wrote: >> On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 2:21 PM, Xavier mailto:shiningxc@gmail.com> wrote: >> > http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/T/top-post.html >> >> I'm not sure >> >> > >> > What about using a consistent style, at least for one given ML? >> > arch-general is really painful to read sometimes. >> >> what you're talking about. >> >> > >> > Thanks! >> >> You must be crazy >> > > -- > Scott Robbins > PGP keyID EB3467D6 > ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 ) > gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu http://pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6 > > Angel: You've never done this before. Look, it takes > tremendous strength -- mental strength. > Wesley: Resistence to suggestion. Yes, I understand that. I like to > think of myself as possessing a certain... > Angel: Wesley, you don't even have sales resistance. How many thigh > masters do you own? > Wesley: The second one was a free gift with my Buns of Steel. > >

Funny you top posting to bash top posting ;)

-- ------------------------------------------- Denis A. Altoe Falqueto -------------------------------------------

-- Angel Velasquez angvp @ irc.freenode.net http://irc.freenode.net Linux Counter: #359909 Not exactly Angel, your reply should be just above your signature.

-- Powered by Gentoo GNU/Linux http://linuxcrazy.com

On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 06:32:28PM -0700, Jon B wrote:

--- Xavier wrote:

...

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/T/top-post.html

I'll be the weird one and admit that I find top-postings to be easier to read. But just because I like all of you, I'll type way down here. :)

There's a few folks like that. Some folks have disabilities and comment, on one list or another that it's much easier for them to top post. Other times, it's the main guru of the list who top posts--sometimes because they're using a blackberry, sometimes, because they're lazy. However, as far as gurus go, I like ESR's comment on the asking questions the smart way page. (Assuming that comment is still there). In talking about something or other he says Alan Cox can get away with it. You can't. :) Aside from laziness, I suspect that one other reason for it being so common is that it is common in business--and even makes sense in many contexts, as I said in my overly long post of a few days ago. -- Scott Robbins PGP keyID EB3467D6 ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 ) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6 Angelus: I wanna torture you. I used to love it, and it's been such a long time. I mean, the last time I tortured someone, they didn't even *have* chainsaws.

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 07:57:03AM +0200, Xavier wrote:

Jon B wrote:

...some people top posting even in the same thread) made it harder to read.

That said, we indeed have to pick one.. But since bottom posting is already widely used here, it makes more sense to just stick with it. To be honest, I also like it much more, but well that's another problem :)

We should probably be a bit picky about our terminology. What I would call the generally accepted preferred method on Unix and Unix-like system mail lists is called in line posting. That is, answer point A below point A, point B below point B. Putting *everything* at the bottom makes it almost as hard to follow as does top posting, at least for me. Of course, at my age, short term memory goes bad, so.... -- Scott Robbins PGP keyID EB3467D6 ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 ) gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6 Anya: For a thousand years I wielded the powers of the Wish. I brought ruin to the heads of unfaithful men. I brought forth destruction and chaos for the pleasure of the lower beings. I was feared and worshipped across the mortal globe. And now I'm stuck at Sunnydale High. Mortal. Child. And I'm flunking Math.

I tend to post all over the place. On 5/19/08, Callan Barrett wrote:

THIS THREAD IS HILARIOUS!

I agree.

[snip] Personally I don't really care that much which way people post, but as there's a good number of very vocal "bottom posting police" :-) types in the FOSS community that often raise a ruckus when you top post, I generally just try to conform and bottom post in the interests of keeping the peace. :-)

DR

I tend to follow the example of whoever has replied before me. If someone has already top posted, fine, if inline, I do that too. I find top posting to be easier, just because of the cursor already being there, but if I'm reading archives looking for an answer to a question, I don't give 2 damns, as long as an answer exists. I think we've all been online long enough that we've trained ourselves to skim very quickly for just what's relevant. So I guess what I'm trying to say is: Meh, whatever. -Jason

Jon Kristian Nilsen wrote:

I blame email clients, not the poster.

I blame both. What's your point? If you had to use a british car in France, on which side of the road would you drive? If you follow the rule, then you should to same here on this ML. If you don't, you die.

My point being, and I see your point, but there will be More people coming to this list who doesn't know about that rule, and forcing this upon users would imho be a painfull experience. Mailclients do this in different ways, and I don't think all old/new users will be taking it to their attention. But ofcourse, if we had a system for this which everybody followed, it would be great and alot easier too read follow-ups. -JK On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 8:30 PM, Xavier wrote:

Jon Kristian Nilsen wrote:

...

I blame email clients, not the poster.

I blame both. What's your point?

If you had to use a british car in France, on which side of the road would you drive? If you follow the rule, then you should to same here on this ML. If you don't, you die.

See? On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 9:08 PM, Grigorios Bouzakis wrote:

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 08:57:44PM +0000, Jon Kristian Nilsen wrote:

...

My point being, and I see your point, but there will be More people coming to this list who doesn't know about that rule, and forcing this upon users would imho be a painfull experience. Mailclients do this in different ways, and I don't think all old/new users will be taking it to their attention.

But ofcourse, if we had a system for this which everybody followed, it would be great and alot easier too read follow-ups.

-JK

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 8:30 PM, Xavier <[1]shiningxc@gmail.com> wrote:

Jon Kristian Nilsen wrote:

I blame email clients, not the poster.

I blame both. What's your point?

If you had to use a british car in France, on which side of the road would you drive? If you follow the rule, then you should to same here on this ML. If you don't, you die.

References

Visible links 1. mailto:shiningxc@gmail.com

And then theres also html emails. I wonder if there is easy way to not accept non plain text emails. I know some lists have that feature.

Greg

David Rosenstrauch wrote:

And similarly, I find bottom posting a bit annoying, as I'm often forced to scroll down to read what the most recent commenter wrote. (Though, obviously, that's really an outgrowth of bottom-posters violating the "trimming" rule, rather than a problem with bottom-posting itself.) I agree that lack of trimming is th real problem. All this fighting about top vs bottom is overshadowing that point.

Ultimately though, it depends on the context. If I want an audit trail, then I top post. For fourms such as this I trim and inline. Often, after proper trimming, I find inline and bottom posting to be one and the same (as is the case with this email).

We might argue if it's a mail client's fault or user's "Why yes, I just so happened to be holding the gun and pulling the

Marc Deop i Argemí wrote: trigger when it went off. But honestly, it was the gun's fault. If the manufacture hadn't designed the gun to fire the bullet, none of this would ever have happened."

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 8:38 PM, Scott wrote:

As has been stated, this has already gotten too involved, but one

I stopped paying attention days ago. *mark-as-read*. This is a technical list, thus inline or bottom posting is preferred. It's a fact. There doesn't even need to be a discussion.

Aaron Griffin wrote:

I stopped paying attention days ago. *mark-as-read*. This is a technical list, thus inline or bottom posting is preferred. It's a fact. There doesn't even need to be a discussion.

It wasn't my intention to start a discussion, I didn't want that thread to grow that big. I simply wanted to inform newcomers or other users who don't pay attention that inline / bottom posting is preferred here, and that if they could follow that simple rule, this Mailing List would be more pleasant to read. There is nothing to answer about that : either people are nice and follow the convention, or they don't. * THREAD CLOSED *

On 5/20/08, Marc Deop i Argemí wrote:

On Tuesday 20 May 2008 03:08:14 Mordechai Peller wrote:

...

"Why yes, I just so happened to be holding the gun and pulling the trigger when it went off. But honestly, it was the gun's fault. If the manufacture hadn't designed the gun to fire the bullet, none of this would ever have happened."

Yes, well... there's a bit difference IMHO: whenever you pull the trigger to shot someone you *KNOW* (at least most of the people) you are acting incorrectly. It is not that way with mail clients ;)

How do I shot email?

On Tuesday 20 May 2008 10:33:16 eliott wrote:

How do I shot email?

Is this a joke or what? It is obvious that you are doing something wrong whenever you shot a gun but not when you use a mail client and you top-post. Of course it is not the same "wrong" but my point was about the *knowledge*. Anyway, as I already said, we are not argueing about whose fault is, but if we should top post or not. My opinion ( and RFC 1855 - Netiquette Guidelines) is clear: don't top-post please! Damnshock -- Blog: damnshock.blogspot.com Fotolog: www.fotolog.com/damnshock

On Tuesday 20 May 2008 23:55:38 Mordechai Peller wrote:

Like with firing a gun, it depends on the context.

Yeah, well, while reading your email: "Why yes, I just so happened to be holding the gun and pulling the trigger when it went off. But honestly, it was the gun's fault. If the manufacture hadn't designed the gun to fire the bullet, none of this would ever have happened." It seems to me that you were regreting something here and I ( again, seems clear IMHO) understood it was about shoting someone who didn't deserve it. So, here is a *bad* thing to "shot" a gun.

Actually, some have blamed email clients, which I think is ridiculous, and which is why I attempted to use humor to highlight the folly.

This was not the topic of this discussion and therefore I put it down in the thread... By the way, I didn't get the funny side ( that's why I asked if it was a joke ;) )

...

My opinion ( and RFC 1855 - Netiquette Guidelines) is clear: don't top-post please!

In the context of this ML, I agree.

That is what it was all about, right? :) -- Blog: damnshock.blogspot.com Fotolog: www.fotolog.com/damnshock

On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 8:52 AM, jason maxwell wrote:

On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 4:43 AM, RedShift wrote:

...

I guess you don't like HTML email as well :-(

Neither did Hitler's Nazi regime.

Ok, ok, you win this round. But it was a willful invocation of Godwin, which never works (this is a corollary to the law)