On Sunday 13 October 2002 18:46, Theo v. Werkhoven wrote: Carlos and Theo went just a teensy bit overboard, saying things like:
It is now time to take a stand. Top-posting, that is, posting ones reply above the quoted text, is a symbol of darkness. It represents evil.
and like:
Is it really that hard to do? Delete text to a piece of quoted text where you want to reply to, type your response, delete text down to the next piece of text you want to reply to etc. Ignoring the relevant RFC1855 in mailing lists and usenet posts is just plain rude and totally disrespectful of the people the you might want to get help from. For me it is very simple: topposter and bulkquoters will be ignored, period.
Allow me to state an additional fact or three, and then to derive the inescapable conclusion from your posts: The people who top-post -- and I'm one of them, unless I remember to switch styles for the Linux audience (ok, for SOME of the Linux audience) -- DO tend to be Windows users. But, you COULD ask yourself why that is so. Somebody already pointed the way by saying that they tend to be BUSINESS users. It's a simple fact of life that most of the mature computer users in the world tend to be business users. Most of the people who run computers at home have them at work. In fact, if somebody has a computer in only one location, that location is more likely to be work, than home. (I'm discounting all the teenagers who have computers that they didn't pay for...) Now ask yourself why Windoze mailreaders tend to favor top-posting (or TOFU, as the Germans like to call it). Before you answer that, consider that Bill Gates made billions by catering to what people want, and how they like to do things, especially in business. In olden days, before e-mail, I would often receive inter-office folders containing memo packages. The most recent memo was always on top, with the rest stapled/clipped together in reverse order, with the earliest one at the back of the stack. They did it that way because it worked. Most people wanted only the summary or the most recent arguments or decisions on top. If they needed to refresh their memories, they could dig down in the stack. This arrangement got duplicated when office e-mail came along. Sometimes, people respond to a multi-point e-mail by "My comments are embedded, below". Otherwise, they add their two-cents worth at the top, so that busy executives and managers can see the latest at a glance. Therefore, MS Outlook and other Windows mail readers tend to default to that model of message trail handling. Let me say that another way: most of the business mail users in the world a) have learned that method b) prefer that method. Notice that I didn't say it is somehow mystically right. I just said it's the learned and preferred method of the vast majority of users BECAUSE they happen to be in business. Even the legions of students and academics don't keep to the "right and righteous" method, once they finally cut the umbilical, stop sucking at the teat, and go get real jobs. Now, we come to the analysis part. Unless you have spent your entire computer- using life, sheltered in academia, then you were already aware of the preponderance of Windows in the business/commerce world, and that top-posting is the way it's done. So, based on that, what you are saying -- by badmouthing Windows users in general -- is that you prefer to keep Linux in the minority ghetto. You don't WANT it to make its way onto the desktops of the business drones of the world. That would destroy its cachet of "specialness" or whatever. If Windows users actually began using Linux in real life, you'd have to move on to BSD or something. Let's call them names and make them feel like the unwanted scum they are, instead. That said, I agree completely that in a simple discussion (as opposed to a business, decision- making e-mail trail), it is bad manners to reply without editing/trimming. Oh, and I especially liked this bit from Carl:
'Windoze Users' and shall be shunned by all who honor the good and noble traditions which created the Internet.
The good and noble traditions that CREATED the Internet? Well, let me see if I can recall... Oh yes... war. Several laboratories and research centers in the US military and weapons-research area were linked together, mainframe to mainframe. Does the name DARPA ring a bell? Then, they hooked up a few university computer centers to their little network, so that they could keep the research and information trading briskly among the military researchers and the academics. The network proved to have utility for those reasons and for other reasons, so it gradually expanded to include other institutions of higher learning. Then, it just sat there for a while, with not a whole lot of improvement, until business came along. Then, it took off until it became a household word. Is that the "noble tradition" of which you speak? I'm nearly 50. I was in university computing rooms in the early Seventies, and I've been associated with computers and comms all my working life. In other words, I was there for most of the life of the internet. Somehow, I seemed to have missed the "noble traditions". Comments? Rebuttals? /kevin