[CentOS] Nerd rage (Was: IPV4 is nearly depleted, are you ready for IPV6?)

Wed Dec 8 16:43:50 UTC 2010
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

On 12/8/2010 9:46 AM, Jerry Franz wrote:
> On 12/08/2010 07:03 AM, Scott Robbins wrote:
>> Honestly, I had no one in mind.
>> I remember in an effort to get a life outside tech, I joined a mailing
>> list for something else.  I hadn't realized how most people top post,
>> don't trim, and still use aol.
>
> It really is worth noting that the bottom-post convention used on many
> technical lists *is not* how most of the planet now does email or other
> electronic communications.

The distinction is kind of blurring in these days of huge multi-national 
companies, but business and personal email tends to have quick responses 
where you normally remember the previous content and don't need it at 
all for context but might want the whole thread for an audit trail.

By contrast, mail list mail messages are likely to be seen by many 
people who did not see the previous exchange(s) or care enough about 
them to remember.  So they need the context quoted correctly to 
understand the reply. Also, they are likely to be using a search to find 
archived messages and leaving content that is unrelated to the current 
reply screws up the ability to find anything.

> The rage we see here over it is really just
> another technical 'religious war' by people who don't tolerate change
> well.

No, there are very practical reasons and the point is to educate others 
with obvious inexperience as to how to make their input better for 
others which after all, should be the main reason for typing it in the 
first place.

> In reality, it doesn't matter much for most things either way and
> far more harm is done by the howling over it than using either
> convention actually causes.

That's partly true - if someone rudely ignores time-proven conventions 
you can politely overlook it - for a while...

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com