[Foundation-l] How to reply to a mailing list thread

[Austin Hair]

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 5:16 PM, Svip <svippy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Indeed, posting on a mailinglist is all about respect for the other
> clients.  And boosting your own client as superior and thus not
> needing to bother with etiquette seems a bit... ignorant or arrogant.
> I can understand people not being aware of the problem, but ignoring
> it?  That's worse to me.
>
> I use gmail, and treat my recipents all equal; none of them get
> topposts, as it distrubs the way you read things.
>
> A: Because it ruins the way people read.
> Q: Why is topposting bad?

I feel compelled to weigh in and admit that while there's no Official
Rule[tm] against top-posting on Foundation-l, and I'm not going to ban
you for it, DBAD[1] is very much a guiding principle here.
Inconveniencing other people because you're lazy is just antisocial
behavior.

I've seen the "just use [poster's particular e-mail solution]" as
justification for a lot of stuff, from minor things like top-posting
to major things like replying to all 500 messages a month.  I honestly
don't know where else in life that people have found this attitude to
be well-received, but I can tell you that it isn't here.

I do use gmail, obviously, so top-posters don't create a great deal of
personal angst for me.  That hasn't always been the case, though, and
a lot of people still use traditional e-mail clients.  The polite
thing to do, especially given that we're a supposedly
savvier-than-average tech community, is to quote in context, only
reproducing what's needed to understand your reply.

I've seen a few replies to this thread which make it clear that the
posters haven't actually read the document MZMcBride linked to.
Seriously, just go read it.  It's not that long.  Everyone's life can
be so much happier if we just spend a minute or two thoughtfully
deleting unneeded text and putting new text where it makes logical
sense.

And even if I won't moderate you for top-posting, I will moderate you
for being a dick.

Thanks,

Austin

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_a_dick