On 12/8/2010 9:46 AM, Jerry Franz wrote: > On 12/08/2010 07:03 AM, Scott Robbins wrote: >> Honestly, I had no one in mind. >> I remember in an effort to get a life outside tech, I joined a mailing >> list for something else. I hadn't realized how most people top post, >> don't trim, and still use aol. > > It really is worth noting that the bottom-post convention used on many > technical lists *is not* how most of the planet now does email or other > electronic communications.
The distinction is kind of blurring in these days of huge multi-national companies, but business and personal email tends to have quick responses where you normally remember the previous content and don't need it at all for context but might want the whole thread for an audit trail. By contrast, mail list mail messages are likely to be seen by many people who did not see the previous exchange(s) or care enough about them to remember. So they need the context quoted correctly to understand the reply. Also, they are likely to be using a search to find archived messages and leaving content that is unrelated to the current reply screws up the ability to find anything. > The rage we see here over it is really just > another technical 'religious war' by people who don't tolerate change > well. No, there are very practical reasons and the point is to educate others with obvious inexperience as to how to make their input better for others which after all, should be the main reason for typing it in the first place. > In reality, it doesn't matter much for most things either way and > far more harm is done by the howling over it than using either > convention actually causes. That's partly true - if someone rudely ignores time-proven conventions you can politely overlook it - for a while... -- Les Mikesell lesmikes...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos