On 11 Aug 2005 at 19:52, dhbailey wrote: > David W. Fenton wrote: > > [snip] > > > Well, the lack of effort on the part of many posters in regard to > > trimming quotations indicates to me that there was little concern > > over the issue. > > > > Darcy's questioning of the utility of the Digest confused me into > > thinking that this was also a challenge to the basic request, that > > people take the time to post sensibly. > > > > I think the issue of people not trimming messages properly is simply > one of learning netiquette -- just as with table manners, people new > to something often need to be reminded about proper behavior, and > people who are old-timers at it often need to be reminded to because > neat habits can turn into sloppy habits.
I see no correlation between longevity of exposure to the Internet and lack of quotation trimming. The biggest correlation seems to me with the defaults of the email client you are using -- if it defaults to top posting, there's less trimming. Of course, long-timers like me (I had my first Internet email address in 1994, which doesn't by any means make me unusual -- lots of people were on the Internet 5+ years before that) are more likely to be "bottom posters," because that's the way all email and Usenet posting worked back when I first came onto the Internet. Top posting only appeared after the commercialization of the Internet. And I can't prove it, but I think Microsoft was the first maker of email clients to default to top posting. I don't mean here to argue the validity of top posting vs. bottom posting, just to outline what I see as the history of the issue. It seems to me that it's been at least 8 years that top posting has been common, and I'd hardly count someone who started using the Internet in 1997 as a newcomer to it. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
