On Thu, 2003-01-09 at 20:28, R. Joseph Newton wrote:
> Hi Jenda,
>
> I would suggest that you need a better mail client or message-filing system.
> Most good mail clients support thread view precisely for discussions such as
> this.
I would suggest that start commenting on other peoples choice of mail
software when you start using a program that doesn't appear to be rather
broken itself, I have just spent a couple of minutes just fixing the
line breaks in your mail, every paragraph appeared on a different line.
Many people use text based mail clients, such as pine(to pick a random
example), because they fit the way that the person reads their mail, if
you are using a mail client that doesn't set its line breaks properly
or, even worse, sends HTML mail by default you will annoy a lot of
people who could help you.
I can look in the navigation pane, expand or collapse threads as needed,
> and look to the source message for reference to the original. I believe ost
> others have similar facilities, as they come packaged with most mail and news >
>clients. I did take thirty seconds to make a folder for this group, and I do
> take a minute or two with each download to move perl-related messages into
> that folder. It's not that mush effort to ask.
And it isn't much effort to ask someone to write their comments so that
they appear next to whatever they are responding to, the thing is that
involves effort on the writer's part, rather than effort on the
recipient's part. And would it be too much to ask, even if you do insist
on top-posting, for you to actually delete the mail you are replying to,
as it serves no purpose anyway with this particular style of posting,
and some people do actually have to pay for their bandwidth by the
minute[1].
Also this mailing-list in particular does generate a lot of traffic,
and if you are not interspersing your comments between the text then it
is not always obvious which post of many that you are replying to.
People who deal with a lot of mail anyway are rather less likely to go
back through their archive to check what the message you were replying
to was actually about, and in a public forum, such as usenet or mailing
lists it is really the responsibility of the author to make the article
easily understandable, rather than expecting the readers to go out of
their way to make sense of the article.
> I do believe that there is a place for inline comments. When well-placed,
> they can help pinpoint the errors or show how they propgate through a script. It
>also does impose an extra burden on the reader to parse through messages which they
>have already read.
When well placed they make it easy for the reader to see exactly what
point is being addressed at that point in the article, which can in some
cases be less than clear, though not in this particular discussion.
> I would suggest top-posting as a default, inline comments when they serve
> a real purpose,
There is a reason why inline posting is perceived as the default for
posting to public fora on the internet, it is easier to read, tends to
be less ambiguous, and means that comprehension is not limited to those
who have access to all of the articles that the author is addressing.
also the bottom line is that top-posting is just rude (IMO)[2] and
doesn't particularly make sense, as shown by the old joke about it.
A: Because it doesn't make sense.
Q: Why is top-posting bad?
and that each participant in such a discussion must be
> responsible for his or her own retention of the thread--especially while
> still actively engaged.
But the archive may be on another machine, I mainly use this box, but on
occasion I use a laptop, which understandably hasn't got a complete
archive of mails from this list. I imagine that participants in this
list who don't have the luxury of working from home also split their
reading of this list between their home and work computers, where it is
allowed[3]
[snipped Jenda's post]
[1] this is the original reason why top-posting is frowned upon, I
think.
[2] Particularly when combined with leaving the original text, in its
entirety, at the bottom of the message, especially when posting
to usenet
[3] I don't imagine that all that many bosses would be too thrilled to
their employees using company time to post to a mailing list that
isn't directly related to their job.
Oh and I hope that the tone of this isn't too shouty, as it isn't really
meant that way, but top-posting, especially to usenet, does really annoy
me on occasion.
--
James
[EMAIL PROTECTED] invert to reply
Linux- 'Cos Micro$oft is for Capitalists running DOS
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
