posting etiquette - please post new text at the *top* of your email

Hi Folks,

It is really hard keeping up with the deluge of email on this list.  It is even harder if you have to search through posts to find the actual new text buried in all the quoted stuff.

Unless there is a very good reason to provide the context, please add your new text *before* any quoted material.

Thanks a bunch.

- on


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+ 1


> Hi Folks,
>
> It is really hard keeping up with the deluge of email on this list.  It is even harder if you have to search through posts to find the actual new text buried in all the quoted stuff.
>
> Unless there is a very good reason to provide the context, please add your new text *before* any quoted material.
>
> Thanks a bunch.

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On 27.10.2010, at 09:11, Oscar Nierstrasz wrote:

>
> Hi Folks,
>
> It is really hard keeping up with the deluge of email on this list.  It is even harder if you have to search through posts to find the actual new text buried in all the quoted stuff.
>
> Unless there is a very good reason to provide the context, please add your new text *before* any quoted material.

Usually it is good idea to do it. Because even in this mail there is context to be re-established. There is often more then one statement in a mail you are referring generically from the top. That is really hard for people that don't have the context already. And for the archive it is even worse. I can see that it can become really messy because different mail readers have different quoting styles and it doesn't fit that well.

But then if you are not re-establishing context what's the point in posting the quoted material again?

Norbert


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Norbert,

I could not disagree more - no hard feelings I hope.  Given that, what am I doing  top-posting all of the time?  Unfortunately, I have not had a "real" mail client for a long time.  LookOut!!! provides no way to quote text.  Before that, it was Novell's offering that did not offer a choice.

So I comply with your request, but not because I think it is correct; I prefer to see things flow in chronological order with text attributed to an author and nested $> or something in front of levels of quotes.

Bill



________________________________________
From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Norbert Hartl [[hidden email]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2010 8:55 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] posting etiquette - please post new text at the    *top* of your email

On 27.10.2010, at 09:11, Oscar Nierstrasz wrote:

>
> Hi Folks,
>
> It is really hard keeping up with the deluge of email on this list.  It is even harder if you have to search through posts to find the actual new text buried in all the quoted stuff.
>
> Unless there is a very good reason to provide the context, please add your new text *before* any quoted material.

Usually it is good idea to do it. Because even in this mail there is context to be re-established. There is often more then one statement in a mail you are referring generically from the top. That is really hard for people that don't have the context already. And for the archive it is even worse. I can see that it can become really messy because different mail readers have different quoting styles and it doesn't fit that well.

But then if you are not re-establishing context what's the point in posting the quoted material again?

Norbert


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On 27/10/2010 08:11, Oscar Nierstrasz wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> It is really hard keeping up with the deluge of email on this list.  It is even harder if you have to search through posts to find the actual new text buried in all the quoted stuff.
>
> Unless there is a very good reason to provide the context, please add your new text *before* any quoted material.
>

Or even better, cut out the irrelevant quoted text :)


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On 10/27/2010 7:16 AM, Douglas Brebner wrote:
> Or even better, cut out the irrelevant quoted text :)

Yes please, as top posting is *not* good etiquette, but that's an old
flame war.

--
Ramon Leon
http://onsmalltalk.com

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On 10/27/2010 12:11 AM, Oscar Nierstrasz wrote:
>
> Unless there is a very good reason to provide the context, please add your new text *before* any quoted material.

I would exactly reverse this -- new text should come below the specific
point being commented on. I'm not sure I've ever seen a "very good
reason" to do otherwise.

Quoting the part of the email to which we are replying allows us to make
the reply shorter, and the email is much easier to understand, saving
readers time.

I suspect that Oscar's complaint stems from emails that quote an entire
message (or even the entire thread), then bury their responses within.
This is a legitimate complaint, as it does make their emails very hard
to read. Top-posting may be better than this. However, it's much better
to quote only the specific excerpt that you're replying to, and put that
above your reply.

Regards,

-Martin

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> I suspect that Oscar's complaint stems from emails that quote an entire message (or even the entire thread), then bury their responses within.

Yes

> This is a legitimate complaint, as it does make their emails very hard to read. Top-posting may be better than this. However, it's much better to quote only the specific excerpt that you're replying to, and put that above your reply.

I'm sure that we can all interpret well what oscar mentioned.
It means extract the information, set the context and reply and not lengthly mail, no hijacking of thread.

Stef
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On Oct 27, 2010, at 9:12 PM, Martin McClure wrote:
>
> Quoting the part of the email to which we are replying allows us to make the reply shorter, and the email is much easier to understand, saving readers time.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Pharo-project mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project


To help a little, I configured the list to not have the footer anymore.

        Marcus


--
Marcus Denker  -- http://www.marcusdenker.de
INRIA Lille -- Nord Europe. Team RMoD.

I remember that alright. On some Usenet groups you'd get stoned to
death if you were to fullquote at the bottom. Postings like that we'd
call TOFU in Germanglish: ("Text oben, Fullquote unten"), and it was a
major offense to submit TOFU. And the holy scripture was RFC 1855
(http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855), "Content of a follow-up post
should exceed quoted content."

Today, just about everybody you commonly meet writes TOFU, unless
they've had a usenet history.

And keep in mind that quoting according to RFC 1855 is more than just
changing order: you carefully select the lines you wish to quote
(never more than 4 lines at ones, never quote greetings), you begin
your email with a greeting above the quote section, and so forth.

I think RFC1855-style messages still look beautiful, and they have
their place. But if you're too lazy to follow the gist of it, that's
alright with me, but then put your content at the top, so I don't have
to scroll down to Walhalla.

Niko

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 7:29 PM, Ramon Leon <[hidden email]> wrote:


--
http://scg.unibe.ch/staff/Schwarz
twitter.com/nes1983
Tel: +41 078 612 6354

Markus, try to change the first line of the footer, which currently is
" _______________________________________________"

to

"-- \n"

Yes, including the space before the linebreak. Many email clients to
this date will not quote what comes after this so-called "sig
separator". AAMOF, I advise everybody to prefix his signature with it.

Niko


On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 9:30 AM, Marcus Denker <[hidden email]> wrote:


--
http://scg.unibe.ch/staff/Schwarz
twitter.com/nes1983
Tel: +41 078 612 6354

On Oct 28, 2010, at 11:12 AM, Niko Schwarz wrote:

> Markus, try to change the first line of the footer, which currently is
> " _______________________________________________"
>
> to
>
> "-- \n"
>

I just removed it. I normally do that with all lists I am admin of.

        Marcus

--
Marcus Denker  -- http://www.marcusdenker.de
INRIA Lille -- Nord Europe. Team RMoD.

Ramon Leon wrote

Douglas Brebner wrote

 Or even better, cut out the irrelevant quoted text :)

Yes please, as top posting is *not* good etiquette, but that's an old flame war.

I guess its a different experience via email as apposed to online forums.  I tend to only quote relevant bits including the author.

If you really want some fun, charter a new usenet group.  This debate will arise, and you'd think top-posting would freeze the Earth's core and end life as we know it :)  That's w/o any petitioners so much as mentioning it.

That said, again, it's not necessarily laziness - I have had two rotten email systems in a row foisted on me in succession.  First GroupUnwise and then LookOut!!  Both were/are reputed to be able to correctly quote text, but neither offered the options described.  Etiquette aside, top-posting is poor communication, but the tools to do better seem to be disappearing :(




________________________________________
From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Niko Schwarz [[hidden email]]
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 5:09 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] posting etiquette - please post new text at the *top* of your email

I remember that alright. On some Usenet groups you'd get stoned to
death if you were to fullquote at the bottom. Postings like that we'd
call TOFU in Germanglish: ("Text oben, Fullquote unten"), and it was a
major offense to submit TOFU. And the holy scripture was RFC 1855
(http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855), "Content of a follow-up post
should exceed quoted content."

I think RFC1855-style messages still look beautiful, and they have
their place. But if you're too lazy to follow the gist of it, that's
alright with me, but then put your content at the top, so I don't have
to scroll down to Walhalla.

Niko

I've been rolling my eyes for a while about posters not snipping the quoted text down to just the relevant part.  I get this list in a digest and often read it on my iPhone.  It takes ridiculously long to do all that scrolling.

My vote and request is for a short bit of quoted text, followed by the new info - it is the most brief and logical.

Sean

Agreed.  Can you tell me how to get GroupWise and Outlook to do what you want?  I've read that they can do it; I've never been able to find the features that would be required.




________________________________________
From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Sean P. DeNigris [[hidden email]]
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 9:37 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] posting etiquette - please post new text at the *top* of your email

I've been rolling my eyes for a while about posters not snipping the quoted
text down to just the relevant part.  I get this list in a digest and often
read it on my iPhone.  It takes ridiculously long to do all that scrolling.

My vote and request is for a short bit of quoted text, followed by the new
info - it is the most brief and logical.

Sean
--
View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/posting-etiquette-please-post-new-text-at-the-top-of-your-email-tp3014946p3018330.html
Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Sean P. DeNigris wrote

...  I get this list in a digest and often read it on my iPhone ....

I don't know about the email digest, but the forum.world.st reads very nicely on my iPhone :)

Niko wrote:
>I think RFC1855-style messages still look beautiful, and they have
>their place. But if you're too lazy to follow the gist of it, that's
>alright with me, but then put your content at the top, so I don't have
>to scroll down to Walhalla.

The best thing to do is to make the mailing list enforce trimming
and quote- to original text fraction and reject top- and bottom-posts.

It tends to have a very good effect on readability of the list especially
when looking back a few months/years later.

Stephan

I suspect one reason there is so much inclusion of the content of the
existing thread is all the folks using Gmail, which generally hides
quoted text very well.  I wasn't going to post, but then i didn't see
it mentioned.  It's the reason I get lazy with quoting....

cheers,
Mike