On 08-05-12 23:25, Alex Huang wrote:
I agree. I think the original post and the subject both indicate this is only
a set of guidelines not a policy. I say the policy should be do what's
sensible. (I should be a politician, too bad, I'm an engineer. :)
I think so far all of the posts on this were written to be helpful and not to
be policing. Let's consider the matter closed?
For this particular example a inline post seems more appropriate :-)
I started this thread just to get a discussion going. On the old
mailinglist the HTML was really annoying to me, but since this is no
longer possible on the current list we don't have to talk about that
anymore.
The preference will still however be that you write your e-mail in
plain-text, since HTML -> plain-text (when no multipart available) can
be really weird.
I don't care that much about top or bottom posting, but as long as
people reply inline when they are responding to a specific
paragraph/line in the original e-mail.
All has however been discussed, we could consider this one closed?
Wido
--Alex
-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Kulp [mailto:dk...@apache.org]
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 2:01 PM
To: cloudstack-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: E-Mail client guidelines on the mailing list
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
