DBA wrote:

Personally I find bottom posting a serious pain in the bottom ;-) and a complete waste of time. (..)I want to see it (..)immediately without having to page down one or more pages before finding the pertinent information,

I agree bottom posting is a pain in the bottom, if and when it's done wrong. The major sin on most mailinglist though, is not top og bottom posting. But the fact that most people quote too much. In fact I wouldn't even call it quoting, they just hit reply, write their message and press send. With no regards to bandwith or other peoples time. Personally I find bottom posting most rewarding, time wise. Mailinglist aren't Jeapordy. I would like to know exactly what the post is answering before I bother to read the answer... -- Regards Kenneth Aar

Kevin Donnelly [Mon, 17 Oct 2005 12:42:08 +0100]:

Some people on the list are fanatical about this

Just think about it: most 'professional' mailing lists (like gcc@gcc.gnu.org) follow the common style described here: http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html . Top posting and full quotes make mails a lot harder to read and discussions a lot harder to follow. Philipp

On Mon, Oct 17, 2005 at 11:29:44AM +0200, meister@netz00.com wrote:

Hi houghi,

- no topposts ok.

- no full quote ok

- quotes starts with "> " per line ok

- max. 72-78 chars per line ok

- sigs starts with "-- " ok

- max. 3 sig lines The standard is 4

- no html ok

- no spell-checkers :-) I must start using that. The errors I make are probably because I use a smaller keyboard, a Happy Hacker to be precise. :-)

And to be very correct: real names... Ok, I know, I also do not use a real name.

The use of an alias is, I think, acceptable as some people might not be willing to be associated officially with openSUSE, because it might be frowned upon by their employer. I personally do it to keep my private life online strictly separated with my work environment. That way there will be no discussion if something could be an official statement from the company I work for and my own personal opinion.

What about charsets? I think we should use UTF-8 today. Any comments on that?

Not really, no. houghi -- Quote correct (NL) http://www.briachons.org/art/quote/ Zitiere richtig (DE) http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren Quote correctly (EN) http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html

On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 11:29 +0200, meister@netz00.com wrote:

Am Montag 17 Oktober 2005 05:49 schrieb houghi :

...

Can people please NOT toppost. It makes things extremely unreadable. ... I really would like to know what your opion is on this, even if it is "I don't care".

Hi houghi,

- no topposts - no full quote - quotes starts with "> " per line - max. 72-78 chars per line - sigs starts with "-- " - max. 3 sig lines - no html - no spellcheckers

And to be very correct: real names... Ok, I know, I also do not use a real name.

What about charsets? I think we should use UTF-8 today. Any comments on that?

How about also removing previous sig lines, especially list added sig lines. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998

On Mon, Oct 17, 2005 at 11:33:46AM -0400, Carl Hartung wrote:

This goes along with "trimming" your quotes and is very important to reducing confusion and bandwidth. In this example, it's very clear that I am responding to Ken's suggestion.

Indeed and more about this trimming in the URL's in my sig. Originaly written for Usenet and very usefull for mailinglists as Usenet is also a multi user platform. houghi -- Quote correct (NL) http://www.briachons.org/art/quote/ Zitiere richtig (DE) http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren Quote correctly (EN) http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html

Hello, Am Montag, 17. Oktober 2005 11:29 schrieb meister@netz00.com:

Am Montag 17 Oktober 2005 05:49 schrieb houghi :

...

Can people please NOT toppost. It makes things extremely unreadable. ... I really would like to know what your opion is on this, even if it is "I don't care".

- no topposts - no full quote - quotes starts with "> " per line - max. 72-78 chars per line - sigs starts with "-- " - max. 3 sig lines

As houghi already said - 4 lines are usual.

- no html

Yes. Good summary, BTW.

- no spellcheckers

Why not? Micro$oft spel chekar worgs krate, you know? ;-))

And to be very correct: real names... Ok, I know, I also do not use a real name.

I also prefer realnames. But if people want to use a _spellable_ alias, it's ok for me too. However, I hate aliases like "fE3,x7~5X" ;-)

What about charsets? I think we should use UTF-8 today. Any comments on that?

I don't see any problems in using utf-8 or any iso-8859-* charset - as long as your mail header contains the correct charset information. Regards, Christian Boltz -- [IP-Adresse von ppp0 mit system() ermitteln] Dazu Perl zu verwenden, ähnelt sicherlich ein wenig der Spatzenjagd mit großkalibrigen Langrohrgeschützen...;-) [Christian Schmidt in suse-linux]

Hello, Am Dienstag 18 Oktober 2005 10:14 schrieb meister@netz00.com:

Am Montag 17 Oktober 2005 23:09 schrieb Christian Boltz:

...

...

...

...

- max. 3 sig lines

As houghi already said - 4 lines are usual.

well 3 or 4 that doesn't really matter. But not: fullquote of 200 lines, one line addition and 10 lines of sig.

Yes, that's the thought behind ;-)

...

...

- no spellcheckers

Why not? Micro$oft spel chekar worgs krate, you know? ;-))

Did you ever try to post some piece of source code...it will look very strange if you use a spellchecker.

Good argument ;-) So let's say: no _automatic_ spellchecker. Manual use of a spellchecker is fine as long as you leave it out of source code etc.

...

...

And to be very correct: real names... Ok, I know, I also do not use a real name.

I also prefer realnames. But if people want to use a _spellable_ alias, it's ok for me too. However, I hate aliases like "fE3,x7~5X" ;-)

Noone should use his/her password as a mail name ;-)

*ROTFL* (what a luck this fits into 4 lines...) Regards, Christian Boltz -- Wer es sicher haben will, muss halt lesen. Was sollen wir tun? Die Leute zuhause besuchen, mit Broschüren in der Hand, "Guten Tag - ich möchte gern mit ihnen über Gott^W^W^W^Wihren Webserver sprechen"? [Ratti in fontlinge-devel]

On Tue, Oct 18, 2005 at 04:46:48PM +0200, Kenneth Aar wrote:

houghi wrote:

...

Can people please NOT toppost. (...) Also I would like the lists maintainers of the list to take a stand in this. I really would like to know what your opion is on this, even if it is "I don't care".

So who are the list maintainers/moderators? Do they exist?

I start to doubt it, or they are on a holiday. It seems that there is no official point of view, wich means I can also not point people to any official rules and they can not point me to any official rules. houghi -- Quote correct (NL) http://www.briachons.org/art/quote/ Zitiere richtig (DE) http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren Quote correctly (EN) http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html

On Tue, Oct 18, 2005 at 04:28:05PM +0100, Paul Mansfield wrote:

houghi wrote:

...

...

...

Can people please NOT toppost. (...) Also I would like the So who are the list maintainers/moderators? Do they exist? I start to doubt it, or they are on a holiday. It seems that there is no official point of view, wich means I can also

there's nothing to stop you killfile'ing people who top-post, or killfile all html email :-)

I know an even better way. I un-subscribe. I'm out of here. See ya all. It has been nice. I will be back when and if some maintainer takes a stand on this. houghi -- Quote correct (NL) http://www.briachons.org/art/quote/ Zitiere richtig (DE) http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren Quote correctly (EN) http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html

meister@netz00.com wrote:

Am Dienstag 18 Oktober 2005 18:41 schrieb houghi :

...

On Tue, Oct 18, 2005 at 04:28:05PM +0100, Paul Mansfield wrote:

...

houghi wrote:

...

...

...

Can people please NOT toppost. (...) Also I would like the So who are the list maintainers/moderators? Do they exist? I start to doubt it, or they are on a holiday. ... I know an even better way. I un-subscribe. I'm out of here. See ya

Hi houghi,

please stay!

He wont, I fear. to prevent this from happening again, feel free to complete: http://www.opensuse.org/Opensuse_mailing_list_netiquette and, please, be friendly. jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.net http://arvamip.free.fr

Ken Schneider wrote:

...

http://www.opensuse.org/Opensuse_mailing_list_netiquette

and, please, be friendly.

jdd

Why don't we just add this to the bottom of all of the list emails as a third line after the unsubscribe and additional info lines?

wait!! it is still to be written!! I made a small beginning, but I'm not opensuse at all. In some time, may be :-) jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.net http://arvamip.free.fr

On 20/10/05, meister@netz00.com wrote:

I can't. This requires an account and creating an account asks too many personal information.

I have never seen a web registration form yet, that forced me to put in "my" personal details.... Even email validation can easily be got around by using service such as http://www.mailinator.com Pflodo.

On 22/10/05, meister@netz00.com wrote:

Hi Peter,

https://secure-www.novell.com/selfreg/jsp/createAccount.jsp

want's to know a lot of personal information.

-- mdc

The point he was making (I believe) it that there is no requirement, or possible way of them checking, for you to enter your own correct real personal info. i.e he was telling you to lie. have fun Marcus -- Photos : www.flickr.com/photos/marcusc Blog : marcusbrain.blogspot.com `The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.' HST

On Tuesday 18 October 2005 17:25, houghi wrote:

I start to doubt it, or they are on a holiday. It seems that there is no official point of view, wich means I can also not point people to any official rules and they can not point me to any official rules.

I don't know for this particular list, but the english speaking lists on lists.suse.com have always had a "live and let live" policy. And I think that's a good thing on lists where you have new users, migrants from windows and others. Let's not scare them away. I prefer bottom posting, and I like it when people quote properly, but even more than this I hate it when people start these debates on-list, because invariably these debates take up far more space and cause far more annoyance than the original "crime" did. If you want to give someone a pointer to the "correct" way of doing things, *please* do so off-list, and politely

Anders Johansson [18 Oct 2005 17:31:36 +0200]:

And I think that's a good thing on lists where you have new users, migrants from windows and others.

As you can guess, I disagree. See http://www.boost.org/more/discussion_policy.htm why setting up rules up front can be a good thing.

Let's not scare them away.

My experience is that you won't at least not many. Kindly explain to people why a certain way to handle things has benefits and most will understand and conform (more or less :)

because invariably these debates take up far more space and cause far more annoyance than the original "crime" did.

No, do the explanation once and then point to said mail in the archive. Philipp

Hi, On Tue, 18 Oct 2005, Christoph Thiel wrote:

On Tue, 18 Oct 2005, houghi wrote:

...

As there is no official statement, I guess the maintainers do not care. I can do better things with my life and free time then to just scroll up and down on a mailing list.

Come on, let's not be childish!

That's where the children come from: scrolling up and down with your wife. Cheers -e -- Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoenke@gwdg.de, em@kki.org)

On Tue, Oct 18, 2005 at 06:53:21PM +0200, houghi wrote:

On Mon, Oct 17, 2005 at 05:49:28AM +0200, houghi wrote:

...

Also I would like the lists maintainers of the list to take a stand in this. I really would like to know what your opion is on this, even if it is "I don't care".

As there is no official statement, I guess the maintainers do not care. I can do better things with my life and free time then to just scroll up and down on a mailing list.

While I do agree with you on all your points, please consider that there is no "list maintainer". I bet you a non-belgian beer, that the first post after a post like "I'm the list maintainer from SUSE, and I would very much like you to do the following" would be a "so, you only *say* it's "open"SUSE, but in fact you want to retain full control as you just proved" posting.

It is a pity that topposting, something that was introduced by Microsofts Outlook and Outlook Express has such a following with Linux people.

Actually, I might be wrong on the historical details, but as far as I recall THIS WAS INTRODUCED BY WEBTV !!!! AROUND THE SAME TIME USENET SUFFERED FROM THE AOL-INVASION !!!!!!!!!! Rasmus -- A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. Q: Why is top posting frowned upon?