Re: [NTLK] List Etiquitte Questions and NewtonNewbieTalk List

From: hellsop_at_ninehells.com
Date: Mon Sep 05 2005 - 07:47:32 PDT


On Mon, Sep 05, 2005 at 10:23:49AM -0400, John Hay wrote:
> After culling through the NewtonTalk.net "List FAQ/Etiquette" page
> and reading I think everything there pertaining to proper posting, I
> don't seem to have seen anything about the "preferred" method of
> posting "replies", top vs. bottom posting. In other words, when
> replying to a post, should the new text be positioned "before" or
> "after" the existing reference clip?

I have yet to ever find a list, forum, or other online circumstance,
where top-posting (answer appears above question) is actually preferred.
It seems, at most, accepted as an accomodation to people that aren't
interested in trimming posts. Even Microsoft's FAQs put the questions
before the answers.

Please note that there are fair number of listmembers reading this list
on their Newtons. This means any untrimmed email takes noticably longer
to download and process than a properly-trimmed one. And, one of the
easiest ways to make sure you're trimming mails properly is to post with
answers after questions, and give a judicious edit to get rid of such of
the original text as contributes little or nothing to the discussion.

> Also, I note that some of the list posts have gone through some kind
> of a translation process whereby what appear to possibly be "high-
> ascii" characters such as paragraphs, lines, question marks, quote
> marks, or the like, seem to end up as "equals" signs followed by more
> characters. Whey does this happen when one views posts on a desktop
> mail reader such as Apple's mail.app and is it necessary for some
> reason ?

The mailing list software does that, in a poor attempt to make the email
correctly readable as plain text.

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		-- Lionel, in the Monastery
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