[HanoiLUG] mailing netiquette was Re: vietnamese language and Unicode

[Steve]

On 05/07/07, David Tremblay <david at roy-tremblay.net> wrote:
> Netiquette is something to discuss and the question of top/bottom
> posting is unclear to me.
>
> I always assume that bottom posting is wrong because older discussion
> should sink since they become less important than the earlier reply,
> however default behaviour of most email client are to bottom reply...
>
> You may want to challenge me, I'm presently writing a user guide for one
> of my projects, mailing list behaviour is part of it.

Top-posting is the annoying practice of replying to a message by
typing your response above that to which you are responding. This is a
Bad Thing™ because your readers will have to scroll down and extract
the essential of the existing thread in order to grasp the context of
your reply, and then scroll back up again to read your reply.

Posting a "me too" comment at the bottom of a 100+ line message is no
better because people have to scroll all the way down through 100+
lines they've already read in order to see your one-liner. One word
comes to mind for that: frustrating.

The generally accepted "right way" of doing things is called "inline
posting", whereby you insert your comments straight after that on
which you are commenting, having stripped unnecessary text from the
original quoted text. The end result is something which makes much
more sense because it reads like a conversation.

This also clarifies things
http://www.dickgaughan.co.uk/usenet/guide/faq08-topp.html
op posting is when someone puts all their comments at the top of their
post then quotes (usually the entire text) from the original post
underneath it.

But why is it considered such a Bad Thing?

Given the way in which newsgroups are propagated, it can happen that
someone will read a response before receiving the original. Therefore
it is good practice to quote the parts of a previous message to which
you are responding. But if you place all your comments at the top, the
reader has to scroll down the page and hunt to see what it is you are
replying to. I, and most other newsgroup regulars, tend to ignore
people who make it too much hard work to figure out what it is they
have to say. If you deliberately make it difficult for people to
understand you, you shouldn't really be too surprised or disappointed
when they don't respond.

The correct manner of replying to a post is simply common sense,
placing response after original, as in this example (the quoted
comments are marked > and are in red)

>This is comment 1

And this is my reply to comment 1

>And comment 2

And my reply to comment 2

>And comment 3

And reply to comment 3

If you're still having difficulty in understanding why this
interlacing of comment and reply is the sensible way of doing it, let
me give you an example to ponder.

Which of the following exchanges do you find easier to comprehend?

Example 1.

Yes please.

One sugar and some milk.

>Would you like a cup of coffee?

>How do you take it?

Example 2.

>Would you like a cup of coffee?

Yes please.

>How do you take it?

One sugar and some milk.

With those examples, I rest my case.

But it's not my fault! my software automatically quotes the entire
text of the message I'm replying to and places the cursor at the top.
It's a real pain to have to trim the quoted stuff and type my comments
after it!

Then you have a choice of three options:

   1. Get a newsreader which allows you a choice as to how quoting is handled.
   2. Accept that there are customs which have developed over the
years and that a few seconds' work on your part to format your posts
to comply with those customs will save others a lot of inconvenience
and will make all the difference to whether you're welcomed or
ignored.
   3. Place your own convenience ahead of the convenience of other
readers of the group and carry on doing what you're doing. But if you
decide to place your own convenience first then you won't be surprised
or disappointed if other people decide to do likewise and simply
ignore your posts.

The choice is yours.