On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 6:16 AM, Jeff Kinz <jkinz at kinz.org> wrote: > On Mon, Sep 01, 2008 at 06:36:45PM +0100, Martyn Hare wrote: >> Top is preferred, it's a standard just like it's a standard to put: : >> I would recommend top posting. : > The appropriate solution has already been settled on, and has been in > place for 30 years, as seen in the RFC above. > > Keep in mind that technical emails lists are different than one > to one email dialogs and affect hundreds (and sometimes K's) of > other people every time you send an email. Top posting to > a technical email list is very very bad form. > > Of course, so is failing to trim the email! :-) > When someone joins an email list, especially one like this one, they agree to abide by the terms of the list. The three I see Martyn (specifically, and in this case - there are others - hoo boy are there!) failing in on this thread are: 1) Meaningful subject line (the OP did this - I can't remember who that was and there were 1310 hits on "help me," which, in and of itself, was not helpful...). 2) Bottom post. 3) Trim replies to the relevant parts. One thing they do NOT do is come in and argue that the list conventions are wrong because the new person doesn't like them. In general, if you went to someone else's party, would you tell them how to run it? I started off top posting (and in html) out of habit. When this was brought to my attention, it was not at all hard to change, and amazingly, the threads make more sense (and are more legible) this way (imagine that!!!). When in Rome,... mhr