[CentOS] Sorry

Original Woodchuck marmot at pennswoods.net
Fri May 16 22:40:35 UTC 2014


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



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