I'm going to weigh in with a slightly different viewpoint... If "policies" are going to be set, I would prefer policies that would favor increased community involvement over strict rules. Things that would foster additional people getting involved with the project. IMO, setting a policy about top posting or bottom posting or anything like that pretty much discourages involvement.
For example, lets say we hypothetically have a "bottom post only" policy. There are several outcomes for folks like myself that think top posting is better: 1) Don't get involved at all. If it's uncomfortable to be here due to a policy, we just won't bother. 2) Follow the policy, even if it's uncomfortable. May make communication less clear if they aren't used to doing it that way. 3) Ignore the policy and top post anyway. For scenario #3, there are then two paths: a) Community complains and says "bottom post only" - community then looks like a bunch of "policy police" which discourages people from joining. b) Community ignores it, in which case, why have the policy to begin with? In anycase, if you haven't noticed, for a large response to a whole thread/message, I really prefer top posting. Particularly, Apache vote threads almost always end up as top posts. Easier to tally by the release manager. Another reason is that I use my phone a lot to "scan" messages and it defaults to displaying the first few lines of the messages. Thus, a top post is easier to scan on the phone. :-) That's my thoughts. :-) Honestly, at Apache, I'm not aware of any of the communities that have "rules" about email posting other than the normal "no HTML" (which is basically enforced by the Apache list processor anyway). Thus, my suggestion is to drop the reply posting format from the policy entirely. Dan On Tuesday, May 08, 2012 09:51:01 AM Kelven Yang wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Robert Schweikert [mailto:rjsch...@suse.com] > > Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 2:48 AM > > To: cloudstack-dev@incubator.apache.org > > Subject: Re: E-Mail client guidelines on the mailing list > > > > On 05/08/2012 04:16 AM, Ram Chinta wrote: > > >> -----Original Message----- > > >> From: Alex Huang [mailto:alex.hu...@citrix.com] > > >> Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 5:14 AM > > >> To: cloudstack-dev@incubator.apache.org > > >> Subject: RE: E-Mail client guidelines on the mailing list > > >> > > >>>> - No top-quoting, only bottom quoting or in-line > > >> > > >> I agree with most of these guidelines. I can see most of them makes > > > > sense for > > > > >> plain text reading in emails/archives and on phones. The only one I > > > > have a > > > > >> problem with is bottom-quoting. With most email clients supporting > > > > threading > > > > >> nowadays, it is faster for readers or followers of a thread to do > > >> top- > > > > quoting. I > > > > >> think if you have specific items that you're answering to then you > > > > should trim > > > > >> and do in-line. This email, for example, to me is in-line with one > > > > item. If you are > > > > >> replying to an email as a whole, then you should simply top-quote. > > > > For the > > > > >> people who are reading archives, it's not too much trouble to follow > > > > in reverse > > > > >> but for people who are actively participating in a conversation, it > > > > saves a lot of > > > > >> time not to have to scroll down. > > >> > > >> --Alex > > > > > > Couldn't agree more. I would even question why plain text is so > > > > sacrosanct in these days where mime/html email clients are standard. > > Archiving and searching isn't an issue either. > > > > Because HTML formatting messes with spaces when you sent patches to the > > list. Also this is a devel list, thus I suspect there is a good chunk of > > people using pine or mutt and plain text e-mails are just much nicer to > > deal with in those clients. > > > > Although it appears that the top posting (which I personally hate) is in > > favor maybe this will help: > > > > http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Mailing_list_netiquette#Quoting > > > > This is the guideline we have for all openSUSE mailing lists. > > > > Later, > > Robert > > > > -- > > Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU > > SUSE-IBM Software Integration Center LINUX > > Tech Lead > > rjsch...@suse.com > > rschw...@ca.ibm.com > > 781-464-8147 > > After I have read through > http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Mailing_list_netiquette#Quoting. > > Bottom quoting seems to be more community friendly, especially for people > who are seeking for help from archived email threads. So my vote is now > leaning towards the opposite :-) > > Kelven -- Daniel Kulp dk...@apache.org - http://dankulp.com/blog Talend Community Coder - http://coders.talend.com
