[GRLUG] Social norms

[Tim Schmidt]

On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 7:38 AM, Collin <adderd at kkmfg.com> wrote:
> I suppose you did not. But, really, we can only debate what we do here.
> You can't change what other people do. And it's not even a consensus out
> there either. There are plenty of lists where top posting is OK. And, on
> this list, it seems there are plenty of people who, like me, also do not
> mind top posting.

Have you ever used the internet?

--tim

The Jargon file:

bottom-post: v.

    In a news or mail reply, to put the response to a news or email
message after the quoted content from the parent message. This is
correct form, and until around 2000 was so universal on the Internet
that neither the term 'bottom-post' nor its antonym top-post existed.
Hackers consider that the best practice is actually to excerpt only
the relevent portions of the parent message, then intersperse the
poster's response in such a way that each section of response appears
directly after the excerpt it applies to. This reduces message bulk,
keeps thread content in a logical order, and facilitates reading.

Wikipedia:

Inline replying style (or "interleaved reply", "point-by-point
rebuttal", though it is sometimes also called "bottom-posting") was
the original Usenet standard invented and used years before the
existence of the WWW and the widespread public use of email and the
Internet in general.[16] It is a format that can include "top-posting"
for comments that need to precede one's response to specific points of
what is being responded to. It can also include "bottom-posting" for
introducing new material or summarizing what has been said in response
to specific points of the text being replied to. However its major
method and great advantage over previous hard copy correspondence
methods is in giving a specific response to each paragraph, sentence
or even phrase of the text of the message being replied to. This
creates a natural, chronological ordering to each segment of the
discussion stored within a message and helps make clear that the
responder has read/understood all of the post being responded to.
Since paraphrasing is not necessary, the ambiguities, omissions,
misunderstandings or outright intentional distortions inherent in
paraphrasing are avoided and comments are made point-for-point against
the exact quote of the original message.

RFC 1855:

    - If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
      summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just
      enough text of the original to give a context.  This will make
      sure readers understand when they start to read your response.
      Since NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the
      postings from one host to another, it is possible to see a
      response to a message before seeing the original.  Giving context
      helps everyone.  But do not include the entire original!