Alas, the tyrannical giant Microsoft and its forced default of top-replying so dominates the universe of electronic communication that I fear there is no easy way back to a rational conversational civility. This note was typed using MS Outlook (with a tear in the eye for the memory of Eudora).
Eugene > -----Original Message----- > From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On > Behalf Of R. Mattes > Sent: Monday, April 18, 2011 2:06 PM > To: Monica Hall; Martyn Hodgson > Cc: Vihuelalist > Subject: [VIHUELA] Re: list - protocol > > > On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 17:42:10 +0100, Monica Hall forwarded > > > From: [1]Martyn Hodgson > > > > As said, the reply at the top is usual (and historic!) practice. But > > it's also always a good idea to cut and paste in the relevant section > > one is queying/amplifying if the original is long > > This is simply wrong. Sorry, but the "historic" way to quote in Usenet > (way before mailing list were common) was either bottom-post or > interleaved. I still have my old copy of my university's version of > 'Zen and the art of Internet' which teaches the art of interleaved > quoting (and a lot of other netiquette ... what happened to the net, > sigh!). Top-posting was brought to us by AOL (and later Microsoft) : > their meassage clients had no means of qutoing the original and put > the cursor above the original message text when replying. > > Since most of these "new" AOL users had no clue about haow to behave > in an online community Top-posting quickly became associated with > rude behavior ... Here's an old signature joke from back then: > > A: Because it reverses the natural order of conversations and makes > it confusing as to who posted what. > Q: Why is that so annoying? > A: Top posting. > Q: What is the most annoying thing about mailing lists and Usenet? > > Monica Hall again: > > All I can say is that I agree with this. The problem arises when > > several people reply to a message consecutively, some at the top > > and some at the bottom. > > > > The important thing is to keep the discussion in a logical > > sequence which everyone can follow. > > Yes, I totally agree here, top-posting in reply to an interleaved > message is plain and simply rude. And, btw. one is supposed to _trim_ > the quoted sections, blindly replying with the full message of the > original post is rude as well. Why? Because it really blows up the > size of my message box. And it's anoying that, when searching for a > post, a lot of not so relevant mails show up, only because old quotes > still linger at the deep bottom of these messages. > > Cheers, Ralf Mattes > > > -- > R. Mattes - > Hochschule fuer Musik Freiburg > r...@inm.mh-freiburg.de > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
