[Asterisk-Users] Re: Top posting

[Bill Seddon]

Oh, that's a great idea, Tom.  Let's have everyone operate to your exacting
standards.  I can appreciate that not everyone did their degree in mail list
etiquette and have lives to live and so want to be economical with their
time. 

So for my part I scan emails top, bottom or otherwise posted and reply if I
think I have a contribution to make or something to learn (in my experience
knowledgeable people are often extremely busy and brief).  

Clearly if something has become illegible or doesn't include relevant
information, it's not going to garner any attention or convey any useful
information.  But in my experience most posts on this list are good enough
and some tolerance goes a long way.



-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Tom Ivar
Helbekkmo
Sent: November 11, 2004 9:38 AM
To: asterisk at georgej.demon.co.uk
Cc: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Re: Top posting

George Gardiner <asterisk at georgej.demon.co.uk> writes:

> So that I can understand the almost religious fervour on this point
> could someone please explain to me why top posting is so hated!!

Because there's such an enormous amount of communication one would
like to take part in, and not enough time.  The easier it is to
quickly discover a) whether each item is interesting, and b) what is
the exact context of the item, and of its constituent parts, the more
interesting material we can actually read.  Therefore, "top posting"
and "bottom posting" are equally bad; the ideal is an easily readable
text that's placed into its proper context by short quotes of the
relevant bits of previous communication.  (Note: *short* quotes.  If
the reader wants the full text of the previous message, retrieving
that message takes but a moment, so there's no need to quote it all.)

For my own part, I have taken to ignoring anything that is badly
formatted, top posted, bottom posted, or otherwise makes it difficult
to quickly get into the flow of the communication.  My default is to
move on; only if your posting quickly establishes that it is, in fact,
interesting to me, will I read it.  To put it bluntly: if you can't be
bothered to make an effort to communicate, what you say can't be very
important.  ;-)

-tih
-- 
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo, Senior System Administrator, EUnet Norway Hosting
www.eunet.no  T +47-22092958 M +47-93013940 F +47-22092901 FWD 484145
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