On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 03:27:23PM -0400, Steve Clark wrote: > >> Could someone explain again why we are not suppose to top post? It's polite and shows you are a gentleman. It's in the same category of "consideration for others" as keeping to your locale's preferred side of roads, hallways and stairways, restricting flatus in elevators, dressing in clean clothes that cover your locale's taboo parts of the body, chewing with closed lips, cleaning teeth, ears, noses and butts in private, moderating the urge to scratch every single itch, not speaking in foul language in front of decent people, using correct spelling and grammar, not spitting, especially on carpets, and suchlike meaningless niceties. In other words, it's part of pretending that one is not a baboon. It is true we are apes. We are the apes who pretend to be better than that. > Well I find people get very upset about it, and to me in the grand scheme of things it > seems pretty low on the totem pole. It's almost as annoying as using funny fonts and failing to use fmt(1) to wrap lines at 72 characters. (So called flowed text.) Even worse is failing to trim posts of extraneous verbiage. > > Regards, > > -- > Stephen Clark > *NetWolves Managed Services, LLC.* > Director of Technology > Phone: 813-579-3200 > Fax: 813-882-0209 > Email: steve.clark at netwolves.com > http://www.netwolves.com > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos And .sigs longer than the message. In the last few months, I've done some top posting in order to conform to the local norms of certain mailing lists (not this one), which I have noticed consist mostly of lamers. Today, I take the "never again" oath. BTW, the "totem pole" figure of speech here is inappropriate. "Low on the totem pole" refers to low social status, not low priority or importance, unless your intention was to accuse people who format their email according to the received standards as being low-class individuals. I point out to you that in the area of manners, it matters not a whit that you consider some behavior inappropriate, vulgar or even vicious. It matters what the other person feels; that is why there are no rules of polite behavior for when you are alone. Your goal (in the area of manners and etiquette) is to cater to what pleases others, not yourself. I'm not telling anyone what to do. I'm saying what is expected of them; meeting the expectations of others is one's own choice. Dave