List etiquette question

[John Summerfield]

Some people get slammed for top posting. There are people around who
think it wrong.

On Wed, 2004-11-17 at 19:20 -0500, Drew, Bill wrote:
> I have noticed something different on a couple of linux lists in the way
> people write replies to messages.
> The replies are always at the bottom after the quoted part of the
> earlier message.  This is no the rule on the many other lists I
> subscribe to.  I am more curious as to why this is the case.  This is
> not a complaint at all.

_I_ always place my bit in context.

> 
> Bill Drew
> "Linux newbie using FC3 on an old IBM 300GL computer as a test machine
> which I keep crashing but are learning by figuring out how to fix it."
> 

On the other hand, some people (and I think them thoughtless twits)
quote reams and then reply at the bottom.

I also recall people being flamed (on the blind list) for not top
posting. Then another blind person flamed the first, while offering
advice on skipping quoted text.

My preferences are
Plain text (no HTML and expect a reaction if you post graphic images)
Wrap lines. Long lines cause readers grief for various reasons.
Quote what's relevant
Prune what's not
Modest sigs - I think up to five lines is considered okay.
I've never seen anyone complain about signed messages and I don't know
why. Effectively, they're big sigs and _I_ really don't care that it's
signed.

Remember that if you're asking for help you really want to be a pleasure
to help and the first step to that is making the least demand on my
modem that you reasonable can.

I don't care whether people top-post, bottom-post or context-post so
long as they follow those preferences.

Another point: these lists are archived, and answers often help more
than the person asking the question. I try to answer a bit more
generally than the specific circumstances giving rise to the question,
and when you're reading replies it's well to recall others might do so
to.


One down:-)