On Thu, Sep 05, 2002 at 05:00:19PM -0500, Bo Peng wrote: > This will be my last post about this topic. I am not gonna waste more > time on this trivial issue, even if it is important to many of you.
Hi Bo, One time, about, oh, twenty or so years ago I felt the same way you currently do about top posting. I was "gently" educated then as you are being now. :) Over time I came to understand why bottom posting is so important. Its actually very simple. When you top post to a list or newsgroup you are doing what's easy for you. It saves you time. Unfortunately it causes the waste of time for every other person on the list. Why - because top posting removes your response from the context you are responding to. People must spend extra time to look for what you are responding to in order to understand what the discussion is about. (and no, they can't just remember, they get hundreds of emails a day.) Top posting sends the message "I am so much more important than all several hundred of you others on this list that I don't care how much of your time I waste." Bottom posting says "I respect the others on this list and I will take a little extra time to make sure I don't waste the time of all the hundreds of others on this list." I realize that you may not agree with this but please understand that it is both the official and unofficial law of most email lists and newsgroups on the internet. Those places that don't use it are just full of clueless newbies like I was, (hope its a "was" :) ), that just haven't figured out that they are needlessly wasting tons of time. As for the manner on this group, you are correct. This group can be a little rougher in its treatment of newbies than most others. I'm not sure why they think they have to be but its just the select few self-appointed/self-anointed ego-geek types. Not untypical. Don't let 'em <colloquial>bust your chops</colloquial> too much. There will always be some folks like that around. In this case those folks just happen to be very knowledgeable about the issue at hand (how to use mutt) so nobody in this list will be trying to reign in their behavior even if it is unnecessary IMHO. Regarding the use of bandwidth, see below > > I do not know exactly how many people reply before quoted message but > over 90% of my daily emails are in this style and I can see this kind of > emails all over the Internet. Maybe they are all bad-mannered people, > maybe they are all corrupted by M$, I feel quite comfortable with this > style and will continue to use it. > > In this discussion, many replies are polite and informative but others > are cynical and rude, even they are written in 'good style'. I can sit > down and argue with you about compared to web, ftp, mp3, rm, how much > bandwidth is used for emails but I decide to quit this discussion just > because many of you are too righteous to hear about it. People subscribe to email lists and newsgroups so anything posted to those lists or groups is automatically delivered. The subscribers don't get a choice and if we do the math - 1 email times hundreds or thousands of subscribers we can see that its a very bad idea to use anymore bandwidth than the absolute minimum when posting. Think of it as a broadcast. The other things you mentioned are individual activities initiated by the users choice so the expenditure of bandwidth is under their control. When you post/broadcast you are making the choice to expend other people bandwidth without their consent so use as little of it as you can. Its just another application of the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (man, I can't believe I actually had to put that in a post :) ) And seeing how long this is I'd better stop now before I use any mor.. -- Jeff Kinz, Director, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA. "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" copyright 1995-2002. Use restricted to non-UCE uses. Any other use is an acceptance of the offer at http://www.ultranet.com/~jkinz/policy.html. "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" copyright 2002. Use is restricted. Any use is an acceptance of the offer at http://users.rcn.com/jkinz/policy.html. (¬_ -o) //\ eLviintuaxbilse /\\ V_/_ _\_V
