RE: Top-posting c.
Ulrich Eckhardt wrote: A good tool would reduce the effort and guide users, like e.g. giving them a hint if they leave the whole mail they're replying to as copy. Several corporate email solutions (like MS Outlook/Exchange) put very little emphasis on communication efficiency but only on eye-candy features. Their popularity and the resulting influence on people has caused decay in average communication culture, and that is what I blame them for. True, but it is by no means impossible or very difficult. It just requires some effort. I blame the user more and the software less because of quotes like below. [ Not Ulrich ] GMail uses top-posting by default. [ Back to Ulrich ] BTW: You omitted the attribution line for the text you quoted, whom do you blame for that? That said, Nonsense is a strong enough word to start a flamewar... not nice. Fair enough. I typically leave off attribution because I would rather to discuss things with quotes instead of he-said and she-said. The focus should be on the idea/conversation and less about attributing blame to someone (and it is invariably more often negative attribution than positive). If attribution is preferred, I suppose I could always add it back in. Ironically, this is one of the things I wish Outlook was better about. Ramit This email is confidential and subject to important disclaimers and conditions including on offers for the purchase or sale of securities, accuracy and completeness of information, viruses, confidentiality, legal privilege, and legal entity disclaimers, available at http://www.jpmorgan.com/pages/disclosures/email. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c.
As BFDL, I hereby command everybody to stop the discussion. lets put time on useful stuff i am using google groups (i think it knows what to do) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c.
On 24/08/2012 15:23, Ramchandra Apte wrote: As BFDL, I hereby command everybody to stop the discussion. lets put time on useful stuff Well I didn't vote for you :) i am using google groups (i think it knows what to do) -- Cheers. Mark Lawrence. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c.
On Aug 24, 7:23 pm, Ramchandra Apte maniandra...@gmail.com wrote: As BFDL, I hereby command everybody to stop the discussion. lets put time on useful stuff i am using google groups (i think it knows what to do) Your posts are coming in doubles. And the quoted lines are coming double-spaced! Actually the 'new' google groups is considerably more messed up than the old. And usually its hard to choose the old. No offense intended... Just that since I was the one to recommend you use gg, I feel obliged on conscience to mention this. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c.
On Aug 24, 8:58 pm, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: On Aug 24, 7:23 pm, Ramchandra Apte maniandra...@gmail.com wrote: As BFDL, I hereby command everybody to stop the discussion. lets put time on useful stuff i am using google groups (i think it knows what to do) Your posts are coming in doubles. And the quoted lines are coming double-spaced! Just saw other double-posts So checked the mailing list archive which does not seem to have them. So please ignore my double-post comment (for now). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c.
On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 11:53 PM, Prasad, Ramit ramit.pra...@jpmorgan.com wrote: Ulrich Eckhardt wrote: BTW: You omitted the attribution line for the text you quoted, whom do you blame for that? That said, Nonsense is a strong enough word to start a flamewar... not nice. Fair enough. I typically leave off attribution because I would rather to discuss things with quotes instead of he-said and she-said. The focus should be on the idea/conversation and less about attributing blame to someone (and it is invariably more often negative attribution than positive). If attribution is preferred, I suppose I could always add it back in. Ironically, this is one of the things I wish Outlook was better about. PLEASE add attribution back in. It's not about he-said/she-said, it's about honesty and clarity in reporting. It's far easier to understand the conversation when we know who said each part, and the normal opening line that most mail clients put in has a handy condensed set of headers. ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c.
Chris Angelico wrote: PLEASE add attribution back in. It's not about he-said/she-said, it's about honesty and clarity in reporting. It's far easier to understand the conversation when we know who said each part [. . .] +1 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c.
On 08/24/2012 12:39 PM, rusi wrote: On Aug 24, 8:58 pm, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: snip Your posts are coming in doubles. And the quoted lines are coming double-spaced! Just saw other double-posts So checked the mailing list archive which does not seem to have them. So please ignore my double-post comment (for now). I solved nearly all the double-posts here by a simple rule which deletes any message which is either To or CC: to googlegroups. Each such message has another which does not. -- DaveA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
in 679182 20120821 181439 Dennis Lee Bieber wlfr...@ix.netcom.com wrote: On Tue, 21 Aug 2012 08:07:33 +0200, Alex Strickland s...@mweb.co.za declaimed the following in gmane.comp.python.general: On 2012/08/17 12:42 AM, Madison May wrote: As a lurker, I agree completely with Chris's sentiments. I too, but I'd prefer something top-posted than have to skip through 38 pages of quoted e-mail to get to a (generally) 1 liner at the bottom. Doesn't help me though... Agent shows quoted material as blue, fresh text as black. I tend to not see a one-liner at the top (since it is next to the attribution line) and if the rest of the page is all blue text I hit page down... and down, down, down... looking for black text... Then end up going Wha', where's the new stuff? and having to scroll back up to find a one-liner cuddling up with the attribution line. Yep, and the only solution is for everyone to top-post. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
On 22/08/2012 07:25, Bob Martin wrote: in 679182 20120821 181439 Dennis Lee Bieber wlfr...@ix.netcom.com wrote: On Tue, 21 Aug 2012 08:07:33 +0200, Alex Strickland s...@mweb.co.za declaimed the following in gmane.comp.python.general: On 2012/08/17 12:42 AM, Madison May wrote: As a lurker, I agree completely with Chris's sentiments. I too, but I'd prefer something top-posted than have to skip through 38 pages of quoted e-mail to get to a (generally) 1 liner at the bottom. Doesn't help me though... Agent shows quoted material as blue, fresh text as black. I tend to not see a one-liner at the top (since it is next to the attribution line) and if the rest of the page is all blue text I hit page down... and down, down, down... looking for black text... Then end up going Wha', where's the new stuff? and having to scroll back up to find a one-liner cuddling up with the attribution line. Yep, and the only solution is for everyone to top-post. The only solution is for people to use common sense. At least one snag is that Voltaire said common sense is not so common. -- Cheers. Mark Lawrence. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
On 2012/08/17 12:42 AM, Madison May wrote: As a lurker, I agree completely with Chris's sentiments. I too, but I'd prefer something top-posted than have to skip through 38 pages of quoted e-mail to get to a (generally) 1 liner at the bottom. -- Regards Alex -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
On Tue, 21 Aug 2012 08:07:33 +0200, Alex Strickland wrote: On 2012/08/17 12:42 AM, Madison May wrote: As a lurker, I agree completely with Chris's sentiments. I too, but I'd prefer something top-posted than have to skip through 38 pages of quoted e-mail to get to a (generally) 1 liner at the bottom. +1000 People with Hotmail accounts used to be known as Metoobees because of their tendency to reply to long posts with a single line at the very end, Me too!. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c.
Am 21.08.2012 00:49, schrieb Prasad, Ramit: I also tend to blame M$ (Outlook and variants) for this tendency to quote everything and top-post -- Outlook makes it almost impossible to do a triminterleave response style. I [think] that Outlook Co are guilty. That and the fact that few people even think about this. Nonsense, I post only from Outlook. You can do it and it is not hard. It is just requires a little effort. A good tool would reduce the effort and guide users, like e.g. giving them a hint if they leave the whole mail they're replying to as copy. Several corporate email solutions (like MS Outlook/Exchange) put very little emphasis on communication efficiency but only on eye-candy features. Their popularity and the resulting influence on people has caused decay in average communication culture, and that is what I blame them for. BTW: You omitted the attribution line for the text you quoted, whom do you blame for that? That said, Nonsense is a strong enough word to start a flamewar... not nice. ;^) Uli -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
On Aug 19, 12:15 pm, Steven D'Aprano steve +comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info wrote: is probably a really great person and kind to small animals and furry children, but... ROFL! The first we're all familiar with. Furry children? Something to do with heads the size of a planet? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 5:31 PM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: On Aug 19, 12:15 pm, Steven D'Aprano steve +comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info wrote: is probably a really great person and kind to small animals and furry children, but... ROFL! The first we're all familiar with. Furry children? Something to do with heads the size of a planet? Or it's a Wonka-esque Wait. Scratch that. Reverse it moment. Of course Steven is a bit egotistical. That sort of happens when you're better than 95% of the human population of this planet. ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
On 20/08/2012 08:46, Chris Angelico wrote: On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 5:31 PM, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: On Aug 19, 12:15 pm, Steven D'Aprano steve +comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info wrote: is probably a really great person and kind to small animals and furry children, but... ROFL! The first we're all familiar with. Furry children? Something to do with heads the size of a planet? Or it's a Wonka-esque Wait. Scratch that. Reverse it moment. Of course Steven is a bit egotistical. That sort of happens when you're better than 95% of the human population of this planet. ChrisA He's a long way to go to catch up with me then :) -- Cheers. Mark Lawrence. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
Zero Piraeus wrote: : On 17 August 2012 21:43, Steven D'Aprano steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info wrote: There are cultures that marry five year old girls to sixty year old men, cultures that treat throwing acid in the faces of women as acceptable behaviour, cultures that allow war heroes to die of hunger and cold homeless in the street, and cultures that top-post. What's your point? +1 QOTW -[]z. We're closer to the +1 godwin point JM -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
RE: Top-posting c.
I also tend to blame M$ (Outlook and variants) for this tendency to quote everything and top-post -- Outlook makes it almost impossible to do a triminterleave response style. I that Outlook Co are guilty. That and the fact that few people even think about this. Nonsense, I post only from Outlook. You can do it and it is not hard. It is just requires a little effort. Top posting makes more sense in a corporate setting for a couple reasons. Seeing the exact email trail rather than what someone considers relevant context can be very useful. Not to mention that frequently corporate email is more like slow instant messaging; I need less context (e.g. conversation history) and get all the information I need from what the sender is writing. I find inline (and to a lesser extent bottom) posting to be a mixed bag. Some people do it well and it is easy to read, but there are others who do not make it as easy (for me) to read. Lots of posts are not trimmed enough, or trimmed too much. I am not advocating top-posting. I just think that different styles are good for different cases/environments. Blame the person, not the application for having poor habits and/or being inconsiderate of the community. :) Ramit P.S. Ironically, I do blame Outlook for making it hard (impossible?) to find/see the 80 char boundary. This email is confidential and subject to important disclaimers and conditions including on offers for the purchase or sale of securities, accuracy and completeness of information, viruses, confidentiality, legal privilege, and legal entity disclaimers, available at http://www.jpmorgan.com/pages/disclosures/email. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c.
On Mon, 20 Aug 2012 22:49:24 +, Prasad, Ramit wrote: I also tend to blame M$ (Outlook and variants) for this tendency to quote everything and top-post -- Outlook makes it almost impossible to do a triminterleave response style. I that Outlook Co are guilty. That and the fact that few people even think about this. Nonsense, I post only from Outlook. You can do it and it is not hard. It is just requires a little effort. Top posting makes more sense in a corporate setting for a couple reasons. Seeing the exact email trail rather than what someone considers relevant context can be very useful. That's what your email archive, and the threading information in the email headers, is for. When people used to correspond by paper mail, they did not photocopy the entire past correspondence and staple it to the back of their letter. And then the person responding didn't photocopy the photocopies and post them back with his response. If somebody did, that would be stupid -- did he think the sender posted the originals and didn't keep a copy? If there was a business requirement to make copies of copies of copies, people would have done it. But there wasn't, and it was stupid and costly and so they didn't. With email, it's less costly, but it's equally stupid. Email programs reduce the cost of making and posting those photocopies to essentially zero, at least zero for the person pressing Send. It might be almost free for the sender, but it's still stupid. Nobody looks at those deep email trails. When you want to find out the order of correspondence, you sort your mail folder by Thread or by Date and look at it there, not by trying to interpret the copies of copies of copies of past discussions. Nobody uses them. They just bulk up email and get in the way of communication and make searching for relevant emails harder. I've had to dig through email archives for legal purposes, looking for evidence in legal cases, and having to read past copies of copies of copies of copies (down to ten or twelve levels deep!!!) makes the process much, much, much harder than it should be. Top posting in and of itself is not always bad. But the practice of leaving copies of copies of copies in the body of the email is beyond stupid. If they were *attachments* that could be ignored when printed, that would be *almost* sane, but putting them in the body of the email is insane. Not to mention that frequently corporate email is more like slow instant messaging; I need less context (e.g. conversation history) and get all the information I need from what the sender is writing. In my experience, if you ask a question in corporate environments by email, you're lucky to get an answer within a day. Slow indeed. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
On Sat, 18 Aug 2012 10:27:10 -0700, rusi wrote: For example, my sister recently saw some of my mails and was mystified that I had sent back 'blank mails' until I explained and pointed out that my answers were interleaved into what was originally sent! No offence to your sister, who I'm sure is probably a really great person and kind to small animals and furry children, but didn't she, you know, *investigate further* upon seeing something weird, namely a blank email? As in, Gosh, dearest brother has sent me an email without saying anything. That's weird. I hope he's alright? Maybe there's something a bit further down? Or a funny picture of a cat at the end? Or something? I better scroll down a bit further and see. I'm not talking about complicated tech stuff like View Message Source and trying to determine whether perhaps the MIME type is broken and there's an invisible attachment. I'm talking about almost the simplest thing in the friggin' world, *scrolling down and looking at what's there*. The software equivalent of somebody handing you a blank piece of paper and turning it around to see if maybe there's something on the back. Because that's what I do, and I don't think I'm some sort of hyper- evolved mega-genius with a brain the size of a planet, I'm just some guy. Nobody needed to tell me Hey dummy, the text you are looking for is a bit further down, keep reading. I just looked on my own, and saw the text on my own, and actually read it without being told to, and a little light bulb went on over my head and I went Wow! People can actually write stuff in between other stuff! How did they do that? Now sure, I make allowances for 70 year olds who have never touched a computer before and have to ask What's a scroll bar? and How do I use this mousey-pointer thing? I assume your sister has minimal skills like can scroll and knows how to read. I'm not sure which is worse -- that perhaps I *am* some sort of mega- genius and keep overestimating the difficulty of scroll-down-and-read for normal people, or that others have such short attention spans that anything that they can't see immediately in front of them might as well not exist. Either thought is rather depressing. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 5:15 PM, Steven D'Aprano steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info wrote: The software equivalent of somebody handing you a blank piece of paper and turning it around to see if maybe there's something on the back. Straight out of a Goon Show, that is. Heh. ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
Hi Steve, I don't think I'm some sort of hyper-evolved mega-genius with a brain the size of a planet, I'm just some guy. Based on reading thousands of your posts over the past 4 years, I'll have to respectfully disagree with you on your assertion that you are not some hyper-evolved genius with a brain the size of a planet. :) I've learned a ton from reading your posts - so much so that I think my brain is getting heavier[1]. Thank you and cheers! Malcolm From a recent thread on this mailing list (hilarious) http://onceuponatimeinindia.blogspot.in/2009/07/hard-drive-weight-increasing.html -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c.
Grant Edwards invalid@invalid.invalid writes: On 2012-08-16, Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com wrote: And FWIW, I add my voice to those who prefer to read replies underneath the original text. Same here. I often skip reading top-posted articles entirely, since I don't really care to take the time to start reading at the bottom, working my up, trying to figure out exactly what the poster is replying or referring to in the blob of context-free text at the top. +1. A message which is top-posted is a fairly reliable indicator that the message wasn't written with much consideration for the reader, so I tend to just skip those messages. If you don't care whether your messages are read, continue to top-post. If you want to show that you've made efforts to make your message more readable, use interleaved replies and trim off material to which you're not replying URL:http://brooksreview.net/2011/01/interleaved-email/. -- \ “We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't | `\scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what | _o__) annoys me.” —Jack Handey | Ben Finney -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
I am aware of this. I'm just to lazy to use Google Groups! Come on Ramchandra, you can switch to Google Groups. On 17 August 2012 13:09, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: On Aug 17, 3:36 am, Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 1:40 AM, Ramchandra Apte maniandra...@gmail.com wrote: On 16 August 2012 21:00, Mark Lawrence breamore...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: and bottom reads better than top Look you are the only person complaining about top-posting. GMail uses top-posting by default. I can't help it if you feel irritated by it. I post using gmail, If you register on the mailing list as well as google groups, you can then use googlegroups. Thereafter appropriately cutting out the unnecessary stuff is easy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
On 2012-08-17, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: I was in a corporate environment for a while. And carried my 'triminterleave' habits there. And got gently scolded for seeming to hide things!! I have, rarely, gotten the opposite raction from corporate e-mailers used to top posting. I got one comment something like That's cool how you interleaved your reponses -- it's like having a real conversation. -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwardsYow! Somewhere in Tenafly, at New Jersey, a chiropractor gmail.comis viewing Leave it to Beaver! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
On Aug 18, 8:34 pm, Grant Edwards inva...@invalid.invalid wrote: On 2012-08-17, rusi rustompm...@gmail.com wrote: I was in a corporate environment for a while. And carried my 'triminterleave' habits there. And got gently scolded for seeming to hide things!! I have, rarely, gotten the opposite raction from corporate e-mailers used to top posting. I got one comment something like That's cool how you interleaved your reponses -- it's like having a real conversation. Well sure. If I could civilize people around me, God (or Darwin?) would give me a medal. Usually though, I find it expedient to remember G.B. Shaw's: The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. and then decide exactly how (un)reasonable to be in a given context. [No claims to always succeed in these calibrations :-) ] And which brings me back to the question of how best to tell new folk about the netiquette around here. I was once teaching C to a batch of first year students. I was younger then and being more passionate and less reasonable, I made a rule that students should indent their programs correctly. [Nothing like python in sight those days!] A few days later there was a commotion. Students appeared in class with black-badges, complained to the head-of-department and what not. Very perplexed I said: Why?! I allowed you to indent in any which way you like as long as you have some rules and follow them. I imagined that I had been perfectly reasonable and lenient! Only later did I realize that students did not understand - how to indent - why to indent - what program structure meant So when people top-post it seems reasonable to assume that they dont know better before jumping to conclusions of carelessness, rudeness, inattention etc. For example, my sister recently saw some of my mails and was mystified that I had sent back 'blank mails' until I explained and pointed out that my answers were interleaved into what was originally sent! Clearly she had only ever seen (and therefore expected) top-posted mail-threads. Like your 'corporate-emailer' she found it damn neat, after the initiation. Whether such simple unfamiliarity with culture is the case in the particular case (this thread's discussion) I am not sure. Good to remember Hanlon's razor... -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
On Aug 17, 3:36 am, Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 1:40 AM, Ramchandra Apte maniandra...@gmail.com wrote: On 16 August 2012 21:00, Mark Lawrence breamore...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: and bottom reads better than top Look you are the only person complaining about top-posting. GMail uses top-posting by default. I can't help it if you feel irritated by it. I post using gmail, If you register on the mailing list as well as google groups, you can then use googlegroups. Thereafter appropriately cutting out the unnecessary stuff is easy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
Hi. As a lurker, I agree completely with Chris's sentiments. +1 Best regards, Jurko Gospodnetić -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c.
I that Outlook Co are guilty. That and the fact that few people even think about this. Even today that makes sense, because it provides an exact context. Without that, you wouldn't be able to really understand what exactly a person is referring to. Also, it helps people to structure their thoughts better. If the above paragraph doesn't make sense to you, see it interleaved below for enlightenment. ;) Am 17.08.2012 07:19, schrieb Dennis Lee Bieber: I also tend to blame M$ (Outlook and variants) for this tendency to quote everything and top-post -- Outlook makes it almost impossible to do a triminterleave response style. I that Outlook Co are guilty. That and the fact that few people even think about this. Including everything as a trailing quote may be okay in an office environment, where it serves more as a photocopy included with an paper mail response. But anyone raised on 2400bps dial-up on a service that charged by the minute (GEnie, Compuserve, et al) rapidly learned to use as a log-in/pull/log-off/read-reply/log-in/send system, and to remove as much $$ quoted text as possible. Even today that makes sense, because it provides an exact context. Without that, you wouldn't be able to really understand what exactly a person is referring to. Also, it helps people to structure their thoughts better. I tend to disagree with the bandwidth argument, which is obsolete. To me, it's more about communication efficiency and it's only one possible way to achieve that. Uli -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
On 2012-08-16, Chris Angelico ros...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 1:40 AM, Ramchandra Apte maniandra...@gmail.com wrote: On 16 August 2012 21:00, Mark Lawrence breamore...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: and bottom reads better than top Look you are the only person complaining about top-posting. That may have been true -- in this thread -- so far. GMail uses top-posting by default. I can't help it if you feel irritated by it. If you don't care whether or not people read your posts, go ahead and top-post. FWIW, you can make up your own private character encoding and language and post in that if you want. But, if your goal is to communicate effectively with others, then proper formatting and editing is A Good Thing(TM). I post using gmail, and I just delete two blank lines at the top and go down the bottom to type. [...] And FWIW, I add my voice to those who prefer to read replies underneath the original text. Same here. I often skip reading top-posted articles entirely, since I don't really care to take the time to start reading at the bottom, working my up, trying to figure out exactly what the poster is replying or referring to in the blob of context-free text at the top. -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwardsYow! I guess you guys got at BIG MUSCLES from doing too gmail.commuch STUDYING! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
On Aug 17, 10:19 am, Dennis Lee Bieber wlfr...@ix.netcom.com wrote: On Thu, 16 Aug 2012 15:42:54 -0700 (PDT), Madison May worldpeaceagentforcha...@gmail.com declaimed the following in gmane.comp.python.general: As a lurker, I agree completely with Chris's sentiments. I've been holding back on quoting the netiquette RFC... I also tend to blame M$ (Outlook and variants) for this tendency to quote everything and top-post -- Outlook makes it almost impossible to do a triminterleave response style. Including everything as a trailing quote may be okay in an office environment, where it serves more as a photocopy included with an paper mail response. I was in a corporate environment for a while. And carried my 'triminterleave' habits there. And got gently scolded for seeming to hide things!! Just mentioning that there are cultures other than this one. Of course, Do in Rome as romans do is universally sound advice, (with Rome suitably parameterized), so its best to follow the netiquette of the forum you are using. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
On Fri, 17 Aug 2012 09:36:04 -0700, rusi wrote: I was in a corporate environment for a while. And carried my 'triminterleave' habits there. And got gently scolded for seeming to hide things!! Corporate email users are generally incompetent at email no matter what email conventions you use. I cannot tell you the number of times I have emailed somebody, top-posted, explicitly said We have three questions blocking progress, please answer all three, asked the three questions in clearly numbered bullet points... and got an answer back to the first and not even an acknowledgement of the other two. Nevertheless, I've taken up writing at the top of emails My replies are interleaved with your questions which are shown starting with symbols. to make it obvious that they should keep reading. It *is* possible to top-post and communicate effectively, it just takes a LOT more work, and the sorts of people who prefer top posting simply don't do it. Top-posting only works for shallow communication: simple questions, simple replies, and shallow threads, two or three replies at most. It's good for emails like: Subject: Meet you at the pub on Friday afternoon? See u there!!! --- Original Message --- Hey bro, want to catch up for drinks at the pub on Friday? but lousy for long *discussion* threads where people are replying to potentially dozens of separate issues within a single email. To communicate effectively in email, you need to assume that your reader has forgotten the context of your reply, since they may have. They are probably dealing with dozens of other similar emails. A thread may go on for a week, or the question may have been asked a month ago and the reply only sent now. In long discussions, subjects may drift so that the subject line is no longer appropriate, or it may be a generic subject line. In interleaved email, the quoted text acts as a refresher of previous content. If you don't interleave, you are responsible for adding context. Rather than: Sort the list first. write something like: Your binary search is failing because the list is unsorted. Sort the list first. That's a trivial example. In practice this becomes a PITA real fast, which is why top-posting discourages discussion in depth and encourages short, shallow, context-free replies. Just mentioning that there are cultures other than this one. There are cultures that marry five year old girls to sixty year old men, cultures that treat throwing acid in the faces of women as acceptable behaviour, cultures that allow war heroes to die of hunger and cold homeless in the street, and cultures that top-post. What's your point? Of course, Do in Rome as romans do is universally sound advice, (with Rome suitably parameterized), so its best to follow the netiquette of the forum you are using. Unless you think you can change the culture of Rome by example. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
: On 17 August 2012 21:43, Steven D'Aprano steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info wrote: There are cultures that marry five year old girls to sixty year old men, cultures that treat throwing acid in the faces of women as acceptable behaviour, cultures that allow war heroes to die of hunger and cold homeless in the street, and cultures that top-post. What's your point? +1 QOTW -[]z. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Top-posting c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)
And FWIW, I add my voice to those who prefer to read replies underneath the original text. Even if Mark were the only person vocal enough to complain, you can still rest assured that there are many more who agree. You've now heard from quite a few regular posters; there are probably several *hundred* lurkers who feel the same way, but do not post (possibly because they cannot). Also, these mails get archived all over the internet, so a generation not yet born can read and be either enlightened or irritated, as the case may be. ChrisA As a lurker, I agree completely with Chris's sentiments. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
