Top-posting &c. (was Re: [ANNC] pybotwar-0.8)

[Alex Strickland]

As a lurker, I agree completely with Chris's sentiments.

I too, but I'd prefer something top-posted than have to skip through 38
pages of quoted e-mail to get to a (generally) 1 liner at the bottom.

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

I too, but I'd prefer something top-posted than have to skip through 38
pages of quoted e-mail to get to a (generally) 1 liner at the bottom.

+1000

People with Hotmail accounts used to be known as "Metoobees" because of
their tendency to reply to long posts with a single line at the very end,
"Me too!".

 

[Ulrich Eckhardt]

Am 21.08.2012 00:49, schrieb Prasad, Ramit:

I also tend to blame M$ (Outlook and variants) for this tendency to
quote everything and top-post -- Outlook makes it almost impossible
to do a trim&interleave response style.

I [think] that Outlook & Co are guilty. That and the fact that few
people even think about this.

Nonsense, I post only from Outlook. You can do it and it is not hard.
It is just requires a little effort.

A good tool would reduce the effort and guide users, like e.g. giving
them a hint if they leave the whole mail they're replying to as copy.
Several corporate email solutions (like MS Outlook/Exchange) put very
little emphasis on communication efficiency but only on eye-candy
features. Their popularity and the resulting influence on people has
caused decay in average communication culture, and that is what I blame
them for.


BTW: You omitted the attribution line for the text you quoted, whom do
you blame for that? That said, "Nonsense" is a strong enough word to
start a flamewar... not nice.

;^)

Uli

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

I too, but I'd prefer something top-posted than have to skip through 38
pages of quoted e-mail to get to a (generally) 1 liner at the bottom.

Doesn't help me though... Agent shows quoted material as blue, fresh
text as black.

I tend to not see a one-liner at the top (since it is next to the
attribution line) and if the rest of the page is all blue text I hit
page down... and down, down, down... looking for black text... Then end
up going "Wha', where's the new stuff?" and having to scroll back up to
find a one-liner cuddling up with the attribution line.

 

[Bob Martin]

Doesn't help me though... Agent shows quoted material as blue, fresh
text as black.

I tend to not see a one-liner at the top (since it is next to the
attribution line) and if the rest of the page is all blue text I hit
page down... and down, down, down... looking for black text... Then end
up going "Wha', where's the new stuff?" and having to scroll back up to
find a one-liner cuddling up with the attribution line.

Yep, and the only solution is for everyone to top-post.

 

[Mark Lawrence]

Yep, and the only solution is for everyone to top-post.

The only solution is for people to use common sense. At least one snag
is that Voltaire said common sense is not so common.

 

[Prasad, Ramit]

A good tool would reduce the effort and guideusers, like e.g. giving
them a hint if they leave the whole mail they're replying to as copy.
Several corporate email solutions (like MS Outlook/Exchange) put very
little emphasis on communication efficiency but only on eye-candy
features. Their popularity and the resulting influence on people has
caused decay in average communication culture, and that is what I blame
them for.

True,but it is by no means impossible or very difficult. It just requires
some effort. I blame the user more and the software less because of quotes
like below.

[ Not Ulrich ]

GMail uses top-posting by default.

[ Back to Ulrich ]

BTW: You omitted the attribution line for the text you quoted, whom do
you blame for that? That said, "Nonsense" is a strong enough word to
start aflamewar... not nice.

Fair enough. I typically leave off attribution because I would rather
to discuss things with quotes insteadof he-said and she-said. The
focus should be on the idea/conversation and less about attributing
"blame" to someone (and it is invariablymore often negative attribution
than positive). If attribution is preferred, I suppose I could always
add it back in. Ironically, thisis one of the things I wish Outlook
was better about.

Ramit

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[Ramchandra Apte]

As BFDL, I hereby command everybody to stop the discussion.
lets put time on useful stuff

i am using google groups (i think it knows what to do)

 

[Ramchandra Apte]

As BFDL, I hereby command everybody to stop the discussion.
lets put time on useful stuff

i am using google groups (i think it knows what to do)

 

[Mark Lawrence]

As BFDL, I hereby command everybody to stop the discussion.
lets put time on useful stuff

Well I didn't vote for you

 

[rusi]

As BFDL, I hereby command everybody to stop the discussion.
lets put time on useful stuff

i am using google groups (i think it knows what to do)

Your posts are coming in doubles.
And the quoted lines are coming double-spaced!

Actually the 'new' google groups is considerably more messed up than
the old.
And usually its hard to choose the old.

No offense intended... Just that since I was the one to recommend you
use gg, I feel obliged on conscience to mention this.

 

[rusi]

Your posts are coming in doubles.
And the quoted lines are coming double-spaced!

Just saw other double-posts
So checked the mailing list archive which does not seem to have them.

So please ignore my double-post comment (for now).

 

[Chris Angelico]

Fair enough. I typically leave off attribution because I would rather
to discuss things with quotes instead of he-said and she-said. The
focus should be on the idea/conversation and less about attributing
"blame" to someone (and it is invariably more often negative attribution
than positive). If attribution is preferred, I suppose I could always
add it back in. Ironically, this is one of the things I wish Outlook
was better about.

PLEASE add attribution back in. It's not about he-said/she-said, it's
about honesty and clarity in reporting. It's far easier to understand
the conversation when we know who said each part, and the normal
opening line that most mail clients put in has a handy condensed set
of headers.

ChrisA

 

[Ethan Furman]

PLEASE add attribution back in. It's not about he-said/she-said, it's
about honesty and clarity in reporting. It's far easier to understand
the conversation when we know who said each part [. . .]

+1

 

[Dave Angel]

Just saw other double-posts
So checked the mailing list archive which does not seem to have them.

So please ignore my double-post comment (for now).

I solved nearly all the double-posts here by a simple rule which deletes
any message which is either To or CC: to googlegroups. Each such
message has another which does not.