Top Posting....

[Paul Howarth]

On Wed, 2005-03-30 at 16:25 -0500, David Curry wrote:
> Craig White wrote:
> 
> >On Wed, 2005-03-30 at 13:43 -0600, Gustavo Seabra wrote:
> >----
> >no problem - just thought that I would mention it.
> >
> >I think I have decided to always top post from now on just thinking that
> >it will aggravate David Curry to do it is good enough reason I think.
> >
> >  
> >
> 
>  :-)  Looks like you are pretty clueless, Craig.

On the contrary, Craig is clearly one of the most knowledgeable and
clueful posters on the list, as anyone that has been here for more than
a week or two should know.

> I don't really give a 
> twit how people compose their responses to list messages.  What 
> aggravates me is the total disregard some people show for the true 
> fedora linux experts like Alexander Dalloz, Paul Howarth and several 
> others who so generously grant the benefit of their expertise to 
> newcomers and long-time linux users alike. 
> 
> Disregarding the message composition preferences of Alexander, Paul, et 
> al makes it harder for them to be helpful to others, takes up more of 
> their time to read & pare, adds to their work burden, and may well 
> result in reducing the number of people who benefit from their 
> expertise.  Refusal to respect their simple requests is an outright 
> affront and denal of simple human courtesy where it is very much deserved.

I regard top-posting as a minor annoyance. The reasons are well
documented by now. However, I regard as *extremely irritating* those
posts that:

(a) include name-calling, and/or
(b) address *only* the top-posting/HTML *style* of the post that they
are a reply to, without actually dealing with the *content* of the post,
i.e. trying to help the OP with the problem they are having.

Since the latter of these is clearly not something that bothers you, and
your email to Frank was a fine example of the former, I'd really
appreciate it if you could leave my name out of any defences you might
be making of such posts.

> Given the prevalence this week of message threads with "top posting" in 
> the title, and the numbers of other messages containing requests for 
> people to avoid top posting, I see little to no credibility in claims by 
> several posters that as newbies they were/are unaware of the list 
> convention regarding top posting.

They'll certainly be aware now, but it seems that this "discussion" will
have to come up every month or so in order to educate the latest batch
of newbies to join the list, which is unfortunate.

> Feel free to follow thru on your top posting idea, Craig.  Perhaps I am 
> the only person on the list that perceives such an action as an affront 
> to those making substantial contributions to the fedora community.

Or perhaps you didn't realise he was joking (I hope!)?

Paul.
-- 
Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org>