[maemo-community] Mailing List posting netiquette

[From: Sebastian 'CrashandDie' Lauwers]

On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 11:30 AM, Aniello Del Sorbo <anidel at gmail.com> wrote:
> But, sorry this is becoming a flame, the endless useless flame about
> top or lower :)

Indeed. However, the main issue I have with wrong quoting is not so
much top-or-bottom. I prefer *reading* and email top-to-bottom, in a
natural way, as most of our respective languages have been designed (I
do not believe anyone on the mailing list has Mandarin or Hebrew as
mother-tongues?). My main issue is that each email carries residues of
every single other email in the thread. These lists can generate
enormous threads, what's the point of having every single email
bottom-quoting every single other email? How alienating is that for
newcomers?

On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Aniello Del Sorbo <anidel at gmail.com> wrote:
> So why do all the mailers I know leave two or three empty white lines that
> I will have to remove manually ?

Because most people are lazy, and the same as with "t3xt msging",
people don't respect the people they're communicating with enough to
spend a few seconds editing their emails for basic readability. Why do
*most* email clients do this? Because sadly, democracy works with
numbers.

> The point is also that few people (and only for longer messages) reply
> point by point. The vast majority of people reply in one shot.
> So the point is either before or after the actual quoted mail (or part of it).

Not at all. What if I had put everything I said in one paragraph,
without context? Most of it wouldn't have made any sense at all. I am
jumping from point to point, and do not need to explain the context,
as quoting you does that for me. This isn't an extremely long message,
however, its readability increased drastically using simple editing
rules.

> I personally always liked reply on top. This because one tends to KNOW
> already what's being quoted (becuase he already read it when it was sent).
> And I leave it quote just for reference. More or less the way you just did with

Well, no, they didn't. An outsider, who finds this email through
Google would not have known what you were saying. This is especially
true with technical mailing lists, where clarity for archiving is
extremely important, as it directly affects the quality of the
question being asked. Also, I can quote multiple paragraphs from
multiple emails, as you have replied in very quick succession. Again,
if someone just saw me replying to the last email (which is what
happens, considering the In-Reply-To fields, and the References fields
would probably not be able to keep up with email fusion), he wouldn't
understand why I was talking about quoting and such, as you did not
talk about it in your last email.

Disclaimer: I've been a Usenet moderator for years. Forgive the standard output.

-- 
question = ( to ) ? be : ! be;
      -- Wm. Shakespeare