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