[Techtalk] Top posting discussion

Carla Schroder carla at bratgrrl.com
Wed Jul 9 19:45:13 EST 2003


On Wednesday 09 July 2003 6:55 pm, Staci wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Jul 2003, Piglet wrote:
> > --pig, who rather feels like she's been told "change or go away"

I hope piglet does not go away- I would rather have people post oddly 
formatted messages than go away. :) But piglet, when you top-post a reply to 
a message that already has a bottom-posting pattern established, it's a real 
pain to follow, and to reply to.  It would be better to follow the 
established pattern, at least it's sequential. It's not like me, or any other 
average busy person here, who gets a lot of mail and subscribes to a number 
of lists, has infinite time and patience to decipher messages.
>
> Yeah, I frequently feel like that.
> But the fact of the matter is, the whole discussion is really moot.
> Almost no one will read this and say "gee, I really should change my
> posting style" and then do it, far more will sit down and say "What an
> irritating conversation" and keep posting the way they always have.
>
> Nobody cares enuf to change their own behavior, and a person can only
> change their own behavior. Why bother hassling people about it?

I changed my posting style after a discussion in a newsgroup about it. Like so 
many people, I started out on Windows in a corporate environment. Which is 
the opposite of what is sensible. The discussion made sense, so I changed, 
rather than being stubborn for no good reason. 

Did you read this?
http://www.allmyfaqs.com/faq.pl?How_to_post

"The object is to communicate with the reader, not just make life easy for the 
writer. It's the same idea behind using mark-up and formatting and layout and 
design to build a web site -- the author does a little work and sufffers a 
little inconvenience so all the readers can benefit. If you've got something 
worthwhile to say, it's worth putting some thought into designing the 
message. "

Sounds pretty sensible to me.
-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Carla Schroder
www.tuxcomputing.com
this message brought to you
by Libranet 2.7 and Kmail
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


More information about the Techtalk mailing list