On 5/18/18 8:25 AM, Paul Moore wrote: > On 18 May 2018 at 12:08, Rhodri James <rho...@kynesim.co.uk> wrote: > There are two completely independent cultures here. In "Corporate" > cultures like where I work (where IT and business functions interact a > lot, and business users typically use tools like Outlook) top-posting > is common, conventional, and frankly, effective. Conversely, in purely > technical communities like open source, where conventions originated > in low-bandwidth channels like early networks, interspersed posting, > heavy trimming and careful quoting are the norm. I've participated in > both communities for 30 years or more, and you deal with people in the > way that they find most comfortable. > > It's polite to follow the conventions of the community that you're > interacting with - so on this mailing list, for example, quoting and > posting inline is the norm and top-posting is considered impolite. > Arguing about how the community's conventions are wrong is also > impolite :-) I'm reminded of the old stereotypes of Brits speaking > English NICE AND LOUDLY to foreigners to help them understand what > we're saying... (Disclaimer: I'm a Brit, so I'm poking fun at myself > here :-)) > > Paul
I would divide the two communities/cultures differently. Top Posting is reasonable, effective and common in an environment where the primary recipients of the message can be assumed to have read, and likely remembered, the previous messages, and they are included mostly as a quick memory aid to remember WHICH conversation this message pertains with, or to a lessor extent, to help bring someone new to the conversation up to speed or if the message is pulled up out of an archive. Here the real focus is on the new content and the past record is mostly a 'foot note' (which is expected to be at the end). Since people tend to ignore the quoted material, if often ends up unedited and gets long (this actual is useful when someone new gets added to the email chain) The second community has a wide audience, and it is expected that many people may come in at 'the middle' of a discussion, and thus the message with the history is likely to be read as a whole. It also can generally be assume that prior messages are available, thus less context is 'needed'. Here Interspersed/Bottom posting works better (Interspersed if responding point by point, Bottom if single point or responding to the message en-total.) Mailing list, Usenet, Forums and the like all tend to fall into the second category, but people more used to the more private type of conversations may have bad habits and not think about how it should transition to the different environment. -- Richard Damon -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
