I strongly prefer receiving google groups messages in digest mode

Wow. In such a short amount of time we've already seen all the interesting
typical evils of the scala mailing lists. Top quoting, Not cutting quotes to
relevant portions of the original message, cross posting and thus ignoring the
reply-to.. As this text is ignored anyways (except by you, dear casual one
message at a time reader), I shall complete this list by writing something
completely off-topic that's not even good enough for scala-debate.
Oh. And we're all technically savvy enough to manage our settings (except for
those IDE users, here you go flamebait! ;), so the content of this message at
best is in jest.

For a forum that I follow with one eye, digest is usually better, so +1

On 14 December 2010 14:57, martin odersky wrote:
> This is a poll.
>
> Please respond to this mail if you strongly prefer receiving google groups
> messages in digest mode.
> The text does not matter -- I will simply count responses.
>
> Thanks
>
>  -- Martin
>
>

Yes

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 3:57 PM, martin odersky <martin.odersky@epfl.ch> wrote:

This is a poll.

Please respond to this mail if you strongly prefer receiving google groups messages in digest mode.
The text does not matter -- I will simply count responses.

Thanks

Yes

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 3:57 PM, martin odersky <martin.odersky@epfl.ch> wrote:

This is a poll.

Please respond to this mail if you strongly prefer receiving google groups messages in digest mode.
The text does not matter -- I will simply count responses.

Thanks

+1

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 7:05 PM, Carsten Saager wrote:
> Yes
>
> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 3:57 PM, martin odersky
> wrote:
>>
>> This is a poll.
>>
>> Please respond to this mail if you strongly prefer receiving google groups
>> messages in digest mode.
>> The text does not matter -- I will simply count responses.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>>  -- Martin
>>
>
>

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 9:19 AM, Martin S. Weber <martin.weber@nist.gov> wrote:

Wow. In such a short amount of time we've already seen all the interesting typical evils of the scala mailing lists. Top quoting, Not cutting quotes to relevant portions of the original message, cross posting and thus ignoring the reply-to.. As this text is ignored anyways (except by you, dear casual one message at a time reader), I shall complete this list by writing something completely off-topic that's not even good enough for scala-debate.
Oh. And we're all technically savvy enough to manage our settings (except for those IDE users, here you go flamebait! ;), so the content of this message at best is in jest.

This is the only list where I've ever seen complaints about "top quoting".  In the other lists I participate in, top quoting is quite prevalent and no one complains about it.  I wonder if it's a problem with old email clients that don't set off quotes in an obvious way.

Bill

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 02:08:42PM -0600, Bill Burdick wrote:
> This is the only list where I've ever seen complaints about "top
> quoting".

Welcome to the Internet! Since this is your first mailing list, let me
point out some of the nicer features of this model. Over here there's a
nice shrimp buffet. Calisthenics 11:00 AM daily on the acapulco deck.
And if you push this button right over here it goes "vroom, vroom" in a
really entertaining way.

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 2:22 PM, Paul Phillips <paulp@improving.org> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 02:08:42PM -0600, Bill Burdick wrote:
> This is the only list where I've ever seen complaints about "top
> quoting".

Welcome to the Internet! Since this is your first mailing list, let me
point out some of the nicer features of this model.  Over here there's a
nice shrimp buffet.  Calisthenics 11:00 AM daily on the acapulco deck.
And if you push this button right over here it goes "vroom, vroom" in a
really entertaining way.

Umm, interesting.  This is a nice contrast that really highlights the polite behavior of most of the people on this list, something that has always stood out for me in this list.

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 12:08 PM, Bill Burdick wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 9:19 AM, Martin S. Weber
> wrote:
>>
>> Wow. In such a short amount of time we've already seen all the interesting
>> typical evils of the scala mailing lists. Top quoting, Not cutting quotes to
>> relevant portions of the original message, cross posting and thus ignoring
>> the reply-to.. As this text is ignored anyways (except by you, dear casual
>> one message at a time reader), I shall complete this list by writing
>> something completely off-topic that's not even good enough for scala-debate.
>> Oh. And we're all technically savvy enough to manage our settings (except
>> for those IDE users, here you go flamebait! ;), so the content of this
>> message at best is in jest.
>
> This is the only list where I've ever seen complaints about "top quoting".
>  In the other lists I participate in, top quoting is quite prevalent and no
> one complains about it.

That's a bit like Pauline Kael's comment that she couldn't understand
how Nixon could have won, because no one she knew voted for him. Your
personal experience is very limited and thus indicative of nothing.

> I wonder if it's a problem with old email clients
> that don't set off quotes in an obvious way.

No, that's one of the reasons *for* top posting. For all the gory
details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style, but if you
don't want to take the time, here's an excerpt:

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 12:38 AM, Jim Balter <Jim@balter.name> wrote:

> This is the only list where I've ever seen complaints about "top quoting".
>  In the other lists I participate in, top quoting is quite prevalent and no
> one complains about it.

That's a bit like Pauline Kael's comment that she couldn't understand
how Nixon could have won, because no one she knew voted for him. Your
personal experience is very limited and thus indicative of nothing.

My personal experience is very limited?  You're championing an interesting cause.  I think top quoting is a strange issue to be passionate about, but to each his own.  I've been honoring the particulars of the anti-top quoting-crusade here on this list for months, out of courtesy to the complainers, because I really don't care.  Maybe you'd like to take the anti-top quoting-crusade to the Functional Java and Go lists where top quoting is the norm.  Try cajoling some other evil top quoters with limited experience, like Rob Pike (such an inexperienced noob) -- that would be fun to watch.  Hey, if you can make an impression, wouldn't that be a great accomplishment?

Bill

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Bill Burdick wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 12:38 AM, Jim Balter wrote:
>>
>> > This is the only list where I've ever seen complaints about "top
>> > quoting".
>> >  In the other lists I participate in, top quoting is quite prevalent and
>> > no
>> > one complains about it.
>>
>> That's a bit like Pauline Kael's comment that she couldn't understand
>> how Nixon could have won, because no one she knew voted for him. Your
>> personal experience is very limited and thus indicative of nothing.
>
> My personal experience is very limited?

Clearly, if you have never encountered objections to top posting
before. Was the analogy really so opaque to you?

> You're championing an interesting
> cause.  I think top quoting is a strange issue to be passionate about,

I'm championing no cause and am not passionate about this issue.

> but
> to each his own.  I've been honoring the particulars of the anti-top
> quoting-crusade here on this list for months, out of courtesy to the
> complainers, because I really don't care.  Maybe you'd like to take the
> anti-top quoting-crusade to the Functional Java and Go lists where top
> quoting is the norm.  Try cajoling some other evil top quoters with limited
> experience, like Rob Pike (such an inexperienced noob) -- that would be fun
> to watch.  Hey, if you can make an impression, wouldn't that be a great
> accomplishment?
>
> Bill

I get it -- you're trolling.

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 4:39 AM, Jim Balter <Jim@balter.name> wrote:

>> That's a bit like Pauline Kael's comment that she couldn't understand
>> how Nixon could have won, because no one she knew voted for him. Your
>> personal experience is very limited and thus indicative of nothing.
>
> My personal experience is very limited?

Clearly, if you have never encountered objections to top posting
before. Was the analogy really so opaque to you?

> You're championing an interesting
> cause.  I think top quoting is a strange issue to be passionate about,

I'm championing no cause and am not passionate about this issue.

... 

> but
> to each his own.  I've been honoring the particulars of the anti-top
> quoting-crusade here on this list for months, out of courtesy to the
> complainers, because I really don't care.  Maybe you'd like to take the
> anti-top quoting-crusade to the Functional Java and Go lists where top
> quoting is the norm.  Try cajoling some other evil top quoters with limited
> experience, like Rob Pike (such an inexperienced noob) -- that would be fun
> to watch.  Hey, if you can make an impression, wouldn't that be a great
> accomplishment?
>
> Bill

I get it -- you're trolling.

You attack ad hominem about the limitations of my experience and whether I can understand analogies, but a sarcastic reply is trolling?  The authors of UNIX top quote regularly on the Go and 9fans lists and they don't seek to enforce their policies of choice on the members of mailing lists.  I invite you to ignore top quoted posts.

Bill

Yeah, I used to care about things like top quoting 20 years ago, on BBS conversations.

Nowadays, I don't care because:

1. The quoted part is hidden by GMail, displayed only if I want to.

2. The order of the conversation is preserved by GMail threaded conversations, which shows exactly what was said when, which is something one can't rely on quotes to do.

I also used to hate HTML e-mails, and treasure elm. And, in a related subject, I hated sites that weren't usable with links or lynx. I also don't use facebook.

The world has changed. I still don't use facebook, but, at least, I don't go around preaching people not to do so because I'm such a retrogade. If your tools can't handle such a sizable percentage of e-mails out there, go complain to your tool makers, not to people who have to wonder what the hell you are talking about.

Parody (actually, not):
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

" Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
A: Bottom-posting.

" " Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
" A: Bottom-posting.
Q: Why is bottom-posting such a bad thing?

" " " Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
" " A: Bottom-posting.
" Q: Why is bottom-posting such a bad thing?
A: Because it force people to scroll down through repeated text to get to the message.

vs

Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

A: Top-posting.
<hidden>

Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
<hidden>

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
<hidden>

Q: Huh?
<hidden>

A: I mean, if you still read e-mail Bitnet-style...
<hidden>


On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 04:38, Jim Balter <Jim@balter.name> wrote:

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 12:08 PM, Bill Burdick <bill.burdick@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 9:19 AM, Martin S. Weber <martin.weber@nist.gov>
> wrote:
>>
>> Wow. In such a short amount of time we've already seen all the interesting
>> typical evils of the scala mailing lists. Top quoting, Not cutting quotes to
>> relevant portions of the original message, cross posting and thus ignoring
>> the reply-to.. As this text is ignored anyways (except by you, dear casual
>> one message at a time reader), I shall complete this list by writing
>> something completely off-topic that's not even good enough for scala-debate.
>> Oh. And we're all technically savvy enough to manage our settings (except
>> for those IDE users, here you go flamebait! ;), so the content of this
>> message at best is in jest.
>
> This is the only list where I've ever seen complaints about "top quoting".
>  In the other lists I participate in, top quoting is quite prevalent and no
> one complains about it.

That's a bit like Pauline Kael's comment that she couldn't understand
how Nixon could have won, because no one she knew voted for him. Your
personal experience is very limited and thus indicative of nothing.

> I wonder if it's a problem with old email clients
> that don't set off quotes in an obvious way.

No, that's one of the reasons *for* top posting. For all the gory
details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style, but if you
don't want to take the time, here's an excerpt:

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

--
Daniel C. Sobral

I travel to the future all the time.

What a waist of bits...

2010/12/16 Daniel Sobral :
> Yeah, I used to care about things like top quoting 20 years ago, on BBS
> conversations.
>
> Nowadays, I don't care because:
>
> 1. The quoted part is hidden by GMail, displayed only if I want to.
>
> 2. The order of the conversation is preserved by GMail threaded
> conversations, which shows exactly what was said when, which is something
> one can't rely on quotes to do.
>
> I also used to hate HTML e-mails, and treasure elm. And, in a related
> subject, I hated sites that weren't usable with links or lynx. I also don't
> use facebook.
>
> The world has changed. I still don't use facebook, but, at least, I don't go
> around preaching people not to do so because I'm such a retrogade. If your
> tools can't handle such a sizable percentage of e-mails out there, go
> complain to your tool makers, not to people who have to wonder what the hell
> you are talking about.
>
> Parody (actually, not):
> Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
>
> " Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
> A: Bottom-posting.
>
> " " Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
> " A: Bottom-posting.
> Q: Why is bottom-posting such a bad thing?
>
> " " " Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
> " " A: Bottom-posting.
> " Q: Why is bottom-posting such a bad thing?
> A: Because it force people to scroll down through repeated text to get to
> the message.
>
> vs
>
> Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
>
> A: Top-posting.
>
>
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
>
>
> A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
>
>
> Q: Huh?
>
>
> A: I mean, if you still read e-mail Bitnet-style...
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 04:38, Jim Balter wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 12:08 PM, Bill Burdick
>> wrote:
>> > On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 9:19 AM, Martin S. Weber
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Wow. In such a short amount of time we've already seen all the
>> >> interesting
>> >> typical evils of the scala mailing lists. Top quoting, Not cutting
>> >> quotes to
>> >> relevant portions of the original message, cross posting and thus
>> >> ignoring
>> >> the reply-to.. As this text is ignored anyways (except by you, dear
>> >> casual
>> >> one message at a time reader), I shall complete this list by writing
>> >> something completely off-topic that's not even good enough for
>> >> scala-debate.
>> >> Oh. And we're all technically savvy enough to manage our settings
>> >> (except
>> >> for those IDE users, here you go flamebait! ;), so the content of this
>> >> message at best is in jest.
>> >
>> > This is the only list where I've ever seen complaints about "top
>> > quoting".
>> >  In the other lists I participate in, top quoting is quite prevalent and
>> > no
>> > one complains about it.
>>
>> That's a bit like Pauline Kael's comment that she couldn't understand
>> how Nixon could have won, because no one she knew voted for him. Your
>> personal experience is very limited and thus indicative of nothing.
>>
>> > I wonder if it's a problem with old email clients
>> > that don't set off quotes in an obvious way.
>>
>> No, that's one of the reasons *for* top posting. For all the gory
>> details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style, but if you
>> don't want to take the time, here's an excerpt:
>>
>> A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
>> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
>> A: Top-posting.
>> Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
>
>
>
> --
> Daniel C. Sobral
>
> I travel to the future all the time.
>

On 16/12/2010 16:13, Daniel Sobral wrote:
> 1. The quoted part is hidden by GMail, displayed only if I want to.

Not everybody use GMail.

> 2. The order of the conversation is preserved by GMail threaded conversations, which shows
> exactly what was said when, which is something one can't rely on quotes to do.

Idem in Thunderbird in threaded mode, that's why meaningless quotes are useless.

> " " " Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
> " " A: Bottom-posting.
> " Q: Why is bottom-posting such a bad thing?
> A: Because it force people to scroll down through repeated text to get to the message.

This illustrates that careful trimming of quotes is also useful...

The problem is that lot of people come to mailing lists (ML) uneducated. Perhaps it is
nice to be able to participate to discussions without reading some pages of netiquette [1]
but a ML is a community and participating to a community without following some rules can
lead to trouble. Depends on the tolerance of that community.

The netiquette rules aren't made to upset newbies but are made from experience of people
across various e-mail clients, and prove to improve usability over time, when followed.

Alas, lot of e-mail client just don't follow the most basic rules, like defaulting to
top-posting and HTML e-mail (thanks to Outlook [Express] "lead", I suppose), ignoring the
rules of trimming proper signatures in replies and other details like omitting to fill the
user agent field...

Somehow gave a quote against trimming, arguing that it allows to alter original meaning of
a message. But it allows to show precisely to what part of the previous message we answer
(as I did) and, well, the original is still in the archive for those with doubts.

Sometime, I warn against using Reply and changing the subject to start a new thread,
instead of using "New message". Not (only) because having an unrelated side thread is
ugly, but also because I routinely hit "Mark thread as read" for threads without interest
(like this one, at least originally intended to be content-less beside the number of
messages), thus potentially hiding the new thread from sight of many people.

Again, rules aren't here to be just an annoyance, they are generally made to ease the life
of everybody.

Oh, and to those mentioning well known people breaking these rules (OK, these advices),
either they don't care or they have impractical tools.
And yes, I already saw people reminding the mailing list netiquette in other MLs (the Lua
language one, for example). It is part of the educational process: if nobody mention that,
there is little chance people will know it.

[1] http://linux.sgms-centre.com/misc/netiquette.php#toppost

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 5:03 AM, Bill Burdick wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 4:39 AM, Jim Balter wrote:
>>
>> >> That's a bit like Pauline Kael's comment that she couldn't understand
>> >> how Nixon could have won, because no one she knew voted for him. Your
>> >> personal experience is very limited and thus indicative of nothing.
>> >
>> > My personal experience is very limited?
>>
>> Clearly, if you have never encountered objections to top posting
>> before. Was the analogy really so opaque to you?
>>
>> > You're championing an interesting
>> > cause.  I think top quoting is a strange issue to be passionate about,
>>
>> I'm championing no cause and am not passionate about this issue.
>
> ...
>>
>> > but
>> > to each his own.  I've been honoring the particulars of the anti-top
>> > quoting-crusade here on this list for months, out of courtesy to the
>> > complainers, because I really don't care.  Maybe you'd like to take the
>> > anti-top quoting-crusade to the Functional Java and Go lists where top
>> > quoting is the norm.  Try cajoling some other evil top quoters with
>> > limited
>> > experience, like Rob Pike (such an inexperienced noob) -- that would be
>> > fun
>> > to watch.  Hey, if you can make an impression, wouldn't that be a great
>> > accomplishment?
>> >
>> > Bill
>>
>> I get it -- you're trolling.
>
> You attack ad hominem about the limitations of my experience and whether I
> can understand analogies, but a sarcastic reply is trolling?  The authors of
> UNIX top quote regularly on the Go and 9fans lists and they don't seek to
> enforce their policies of choice on the members of mailing lists.  I invite
> you to ignore top quoted posts.
>
> Bill

You don't understand what an ad hominem argument is, and then you use
an argument from authority.

If you haven't previously encountered mailing lists where top posting
is frowned upon, then your experience is, as an objective fact,
limited, because there are numerous such lists. I merely provided a
link to the Wikipedia article explaining posting styles and the
history and substance of the debate, including criticisms of top
posting, and yet you inferred that I personally have strong feelings
about posting style, and persist in suggesting that I do even after I
explicitly stated otherwise. I will continue to read top posted
articles, and I invite you to stop trolling.

On 16 Dec 2010 23:39, "Jim Balter" <Jim@balter.name> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 5:03 AM, Bill Burdick <bill.burdick@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 4:39 AM, Jim Balter <Jim@balter.name> wrote:
> >>
> >> >> That's a bit like Pauline Kael's comment that she couldn't understand
> >> >> how Nixon could have won, because no one she knew voted for him. Your
> >> >> personal experience is very limited and thus indicative of nothing.
> >> >
> >> > My personal experience is very limited?
> >>
> >> Clearly, if you have never encountered objections to top posting
> >> before. Was the analogy really so opaque to you?
> >>
> >> > You're championing an interesting
> >> > cause.  I think top quoting is a strange issue to be passionate about,
> >>
> >> I'm championing no cause and am not passionate about this issue.
> >
> > ...
> >>
> >> > but
> >> > to each his own.  I've been honoring the particulars of the anti-top
> >> > quoting-crusade here on this list for months, out of courtesy to the
> >> > complainers, because I really don't care.  Maybe you'd like to take the
> >> > anti-top quoting-crusade to the Functional Java and Go lists where top
> >> > quoting is the norm.  Try cajoling some other evil top quoters with
> >> > limited
> >> > experience, like Rob Pike (such an inexperienced noob) -- that would be
> >> > fun
> >> > to watch.  Hey, if you can make an impression, wouldn't that be a great
> >> > accomplishment?
> >> >
> >> > Bill
> >>
> >> I get it -- you're trolling.
> >
> > You attack ad hominem about the limitations of my experience and whether I
> > can understand analogies, but a sarcastic reply is trolling?  The authors of
> > UNIX top quote regularly on the Go and 9fans lists and they don't seek to
> > enforce their policies of choice on the members of mailing lists.  I invite
> > you to ignore top quoted posts.
> >
> > Bill
>
> You don't understand what an ad hominem argument is, and then you use
> an argument from authority.
>
> If you haven't previously encountered mailing lists where top posting
> is frowned upon, then your experience is, as an objective fact,
> limited, because there are numerous such lists.  I merely provided a
> link to the Wikipedia article explaining posting styles and the
> history and substance of the debate, including criticisms of top
> posting, and yet you inferred that I personally have strong feelings
> about posting style, and persist in suggesting that I do even after I
> explicitly stated otherwise. I will continue to read top posted
> articles, and I invite you to stop trolling.

Can I propose a new rule to posting style?

Stop worrying about top posting, most clients make it irrelevant...

On the other hand: explicit line breaks!  Stop using them now, they really mess with the smaller screens on mobile devices

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 7:13 AM, Daniel Sobral wrote:
> Yeah, I used to care about things like top quoting 20 years ago, on BBS
> conversations.
>
> Nowadays, I don't care because:
>
> 1. The quoted part is hidden by GMail, displayed only if I want to.
>
> 2. The order of the conversation is preserved by GMail threaded
> conversations, which shows exactly what was said when, which is something
> one can't rely on quotes to do.
>
> I also used to hate HTML e-mails, and treasure elm. And, in a related
> subject, I hated sites that weren't usable with links or lynx. I also don't
> use facebook.
>
> The world has changed. I still don't use facebook, but, at least, I don't go
> around preaching people not to do so because I'm such a retrogade.

More trolling, not to mention hypocrisy.

> If your
> tools can't handle such a sizable percentage of e-mails out there, go
> complain to your tool makers, not to people who have to wonder what the hell
> you are talking about.
>
> Parody (actually, not):
> Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
>
> " Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
> A: Bottom-posting.
>
> " " Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
> " A: Bottom-posting.
> Q: Why is bottom-posting such a bad thing?
>
> " " " Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
> " " A: Bottom-posting.
> " Q: Why is bottom-posting such a bad thing?
> A: Because it force people to scroll down through repeated text to get to
> the message.
>
> vs
>
> Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
>
> A: Top-posting.
>
>
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
>
>
> A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
>
>
> Q: Huh?
>
>
> A: I mean, if you still read e-mail Bitnet-style...
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 04:38, Jim Balter wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 12:08 PM, Bill Burdick
>> wrote:
>> > On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 9:19 AM, Martin S. Weber
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Wow. In such a short amount of time we've already seen all the
>> >> interesting
>> >> typical evils of the scala mailing lists. Top quoting, Not cutting
>> >> quotes to
>> >> relevant portions of the original message, cross posting and thus
>> >> ignoring
>> >> the reply-to.. As this text is ignored anyways (except by you, dear
>> >> casual
>> >> one message at a time reader), I shall complete this list by writing
>> >> something completely off-topic that's not even good enough for
>> >> scala-debate.
>> >> Oh. And we're all technically savvy enough to manage our settings
>> >> (except
>> >> for those IDE users, here you go flamebait! ;), so the content of this
>> >> message at best is in jest.
>> >
>> > This is the only list where I've ever seen complaints about "top
>> > quoting".
>> >  In the other lists I participate in, top quoting is quite prevalent and
>> > no
>> > one complains about it.
>>
>> That's a bit like Pauline Kael's comment that she couldn't understand
>> how Nixon could have won, because no one she knew voted for him. Your
>> personal experience is very limited and thus indicative of nothing.
>>
>> > I wonder if it's a problem with old email clients
>> > that don't set off quotes in an obvious way.
>>
>> No, that's one of the reasons *for* top posting. For all the gory
>> details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style, but if you
>> don't want to take the time, here's an excerpt:
>>
>> A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
>> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
>> A: Top-posting.
>> Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
>
>
>
> --
> Daniel C. Sobral
>
> I travel to the future all the time.
>

It's odd that, no matter how many times I say I'm not passionate about
posting style, I'm told to not bother reading top posts, or stop
worrying about them, etc.

This started with Bill Burdick's taking way too seriously Martin
Weber's comment that mentioned top posting but concluded "so the
content of this message at best is in jest". Some people seem to have
trouble reading content, regardless of where it occurs.

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 3:45 PM, Kevin Wright wrote:
>
> On 16 Dec 2010 23:39, "Jim Balter" wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 5:03 AM, Bill Burdick
>> wrote:
>> > On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 4:39 AM, Jim Balter wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >> That's a bit like Pauline Kael's comment that she couldn't
>> >> >> understand
>> >> >> how Nixon could have won, because no one she knew voted for him.
>> >> >> Your
>> >> >> personal experience is very limited and thus indicative of nothing.
>> >> >
>> >> > My personal experience is very limited?
>> >>
>> >> Clearly, if you have never encountered objections to top posting
>> >> before. Was the analogy really so opaque to you?
>> >>
>> >> > You're championing an interesting
>> >> > cause.  I think top quoting is a strange issue to be passionate
>> >> > about,
>> >>
>> >> I'm championing no cause and am not passionate about this issue.
>> >
>> > ...
>> >>
>> >> > but
>> >> > to each his own.  I've been honoring the particulars of the anti-top
>> >> > quoting-crusade here on this list for months, out of courtesy to the
>> >> > complainers, because I really don't care.  Maybe you'd like to take
>> >> > the
>> >> > anti-top quoting-crusade to the Functional Java and Go lists where
>> >> > top
>> >> > quoting is the norm.  Try cajoling some other evil top quoters with
>> >> > limited
>> >> > experience, like Rob Pike (such an inexperienced noob) -- that would
>> >> > be
>> >> > fun
>> >> > to watch.  Hey, if you can make an impression, wouldn't that be a
>> >> > great
>> >> > accomplishment?
>> >> >
>> >> > Bill
>> >>
>> >> I get it -- you're trolling.
>> >
>> > You attack ad hominem about the limitations of my experience and whether
>> > I
>> > can understand analogies, but a sarcastic reply is trolling?  The
>> > authors of
>> > UNIX top quote regularly on the Go and 9fans lists and they don't seek
>> > to
>> > enforce their policies of choice on the members of mailing lists.  I
>> > invite
>> > you to ignore top quoted posts.
>> >
>> > Bill
>>
>> You don't understand what an ad hominem argument is, and then you use
>> an argument from authority.
>>
>> If you haven't previously encountered mailing lists where top posting
>> is frowned upon, then your experience is, as an objective fact,
>> limited, because there are numerous such lists.  I merely provided a
>> link to the Wikipedia article explaining posting styles and the
>> history and substance of the debate, including criticisms of top
>> posting, and yet you inferred that I personally have strong feelings
>> about posting style, and persist in suggesting that I do even after I
>> explicitly stated otherwise. I will continue to read top posted
>> articles, and I invite you to stop trolling.
>
> Can I propose a new rule to posting style?
>
> Stop worrying about top posting, most clients make it irrelevant...
>
> On the other hand: explicit line breaks!  Stop using them now, they really
> mess with the smaller screens on mobile devices

Please excuse the top post...

Can you all please take this discussion elsewhere? It's not going
to be resolved and is not on-topic for this list.

thanks,
Tony

On 17/12/2010, at 11:01 AM, Jim Balter wrote:

> It's odd that, no matter how many times I say I'm not passionate about
> posting style, I'm told to not bother reading top posts, or stop
> worrying about them, etc.
>
> This started with Bill Burdick's taking way too seriously Martin
> Weber's comment that mentioned top posting but concluded "so the
> content of this message at best is in jest". Some people seem to have
> trouble reading content, regardless of where it occurs.
>
> On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 3:45 PM, Kevin Wright wrote:
>>
>> On 16 Dec 2010 23:39, "Jim Balter" wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 5:03 AM, Bill Burdick
>>> wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 4:39 AM, Jim Balter wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>> That's a bit like Pauline Kael's comment that she couldn't
>>>>>>> understand
>>>>>>> how Nixon could have won, because no one she knew voted for him.
>>>>>>> Your
>>>>>>> personal experience is very limited and thus indicative of nothing.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> My personal experience is very limited?
>>>>>
>>>>> Clearly, if you have never encountered objections to top posting
>>>>> before. Was the analogy really so opaque to you?
>>>>>
>>>>>> You're championing an interesting
>>>>>> cause. I think top quoting is a strange issue to be passionate
>>>>>> about,
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm championing no cause and am not passionate about this issue.
>>>>
>>>> ...
>>>>>
>>>>>> but
>>>>>> to each his own. I've been honoring the particulars of the anti-top
>>>>>> quoting-crusade here on this list for months, out of courtesy to the
>>>>>> complainers, because I really don't care. Maybe you'd like to take
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> anti-top quoting-crusade to the Functional Java and Go lists where
>>>>>> top
>>>>>> quoting is the norm. Try cajoling some other evil top quoters with
>>>>>> limited
>>>>>> experience, like Rob Pike (such an inexperienced noob) -- that would
>>>>>> be
>>>>>> fun
>>>>>> to watch. Hey, if you can make an impression, wouldn't that be a
>>>>>> great
>>>>>> accomplishment?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Bill
>>>>>
>>>>> I get it -- you're trolling.
>>>>
>>>> You attack ad hominem about the limitations of my experience and whether
>>>> I
>>>> can understand analogies, but a sarcastic reply is trolling? The
>>>> authors of
>>>> UNIX top quote regularly on the Go and 9fans lists and they don't seek
>>>> to
>>>> enforce their policies of choice on the members of mailing lists. I
>>>> invite
>>>> you to ignore top quoted posts.
>>>>
>>>> Bill
>>>
>>> You don't understand what an ad hominem argument is, and then you use
>>> an argument from authority.
>>>
>>> If you haven't previously encountered mailing lists where top posting
>>> is frowned upon, then your experience is, as an objective fact,
>>> limited, because there are numerous such lists. I merely provided a
>>> link to the Wikipedia article explaining posting styles and the
>>> history and substance of the debate, including criticisms of top
>>> posting, and yet you inferred that I personally have strong feelings
>>> about posting style, and persist in suggesting that I do even after I
>>> explicitly stated otherwise. I will continue to read top posted
>>> articles, and I invite you to stop trolling.
>>
>> Can I propose a new rule to posting style?
>>
>> Stop worrying about top posting, most clients make it irrelevant...
>>
>> On the other hand: explicit line breaks! Stop using them now, they really
>> mess with the smaller screens on mobile devices

Please could all chill a little.
Some like top/bottom.
Some like MS\*nix
It's a Scala m\l.
Whatever style *please trim*
write 100 characters, post 600!
Can we all get along?

Since you didn't get it, I'll state it plainly:

These rules are WORSE for those of us using modern tools.

It's not a matter of everyone getting ahead by following them. It's them vs us -- one side always loose. I'm siding with modern tools, though I do admit that carefuly trimming and bottom posting have the occasional usefulness, such as:

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 14:42, Philippe Lhoste <PhiLho@gmx.net> wrote:

" " A: Bottom-posting.
" Q: Why is bottom-posting such a bad thing?
A: Because it force people to scroll down through repeated text to get to the message.

" " " Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

This illustrates that careful trimming of quotes is also useful...

How does trimming remove all the other e-mails in the thread?

 

The problem is that lot of people come to mailing lists (ML) uneducated. Perhaps it is nice to be able to participate to discussions without reading some pages of netiquette [1] but a ML is a community and participating to a community without following some rules can lead to trouble. Depends on the tolerance of that community.

Yes, and when people in the community use different tools where the style of one tool doesn't look good in the other -- such as the case of html vs plain text back in the days of Outlook, where Outlook simply did not have the proper tooling to make plain text look good -- the best option is not to try to force one's own view, dictated by what one uses, upon the others. That only causes unnecessary friction, and people simply won't inconvenience themselves just so others don't face inconvenience.
 

The netiquette rules aren't made to upset newbies but are made from experience of people across various e-mail clients, and prove to improve usability over time, when followed.

True enough, but THESE rules are made by people sticking to old ways of doing things that don't realize these old ways make for a WORSE experience elsewhere.
 

Alas, lot of e-mail client just don't follow the most basic rules, like defaulting to top-posting and HTML e-mail (thanks to Outlook [Express] "lead", I suppose), ignoring the rules of trimming proper signatures in replies and other details like omitting to fill the user agent field...

Because a lot of e-mail clients are better prepared to show stuff in other ways.
 

Again, rules aren't here to be just an annoyance, they are generally made to ease the life of everybody.

That is the main mistake here. They don't make the life of _everybody_ easier. They make the life of people with newer tools harder so that people with older tools have an easier life.

--
Daniel C. Sobral

I travel to the future all the time.

Answering this in your style...

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 21:43, Jim Balter <Jim@balter.name> wrote:

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 7:13 AM, Daniel Sobral <dcsobral@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, I used to care about things like top quoting 20 years ago, on BBS
> conversations.
>
> Nowadays, I don't care because:
>
> 1. The quoted part is hidden by GMail, displayed only if I want to.
>
> 2. The order of the conversation is preserved by GMail threaded
> conversations, which shows exactly what was said when, which is something
> one can't rely on quotes to do.
>
> I also used to hate HTML e-mails, and treasure elm. And, in a related
> subject, I hated sites that weren't usable with links or lynx. I also don't
> use facebook.
>
> The world has changed. I still don't use facebook, but, at least, I don't go
> around preaching people not to do so because I'm such a retrogade.

More trolling, not to mention hypocrisy.

No, this is not trolling. These are facts -- I didn't say a single thing which isn't a fact. You are suffering from denial -- you are so attached to a viewpoint that you misinterpret any arguments against it.

Read that again and try to find anything that isn't factual. And then reflect on how come you saw statements of facts as trolling an hypocrisy.
 --
Daniel C. Sobral

I travel to the future all the time.

On 17/12/2010 00:45, Kevin Wright wrote:
> Stop worrying about top posting, most clients make it irrelevant...

It is not about e-mail clients. Even if you can't change the quoting mode, nothing prevent
from deleting the space on top of the mail, removing irrelevant parts of the quote (or the
whole thing) and going to the bottom to write the message.

Proper trimming seems even more relevant that top-posting, BTW. Hitting reply and adding a
line, leaving an hundred lines of quotes below, shows poor signal to noise ratio...
It is quick and easy (on desktop at least) to hit Ctrl+Shift+End and hit Delete...

I did that when I used Outlook and Outlook Express.

It is not (only) about bandwidth or hard disk space, although there are still people with
limited amount of those, paying by downloaded byte, etc. But when you read a thread like
http://www.scala-lang.org/node/7245 (taken at random, not the worst) where roughly half of
the Web page is used by quotes (relevant or not), you weep when you read that in off-shore
countries (pay per download with satellite connection) or on your phone with limited data
subscription (or you just wait longer if the connection is slow). And even on more
comfortable conditions, that's still a lot to scroll.
And even if these quotes are hidden, it doesn't necessarily means they are not downloaded
(depends if reveal option is Ajax-driven or not).

It is not about being passionate about these topics. It is just to show that these
rules/advices make sense and are relevant, even in modern computing world. Breaking them
doesn't necessarily mean I won't read you, but it is just more annoying. Hence the
need/will to propagate them, without wanting to be proselyte or pedantic.

Mmm, I wanted to stop arguing...

On 17/12/2010 13:42, Daniel Sobral wrote:
> These rules are WORSE for those of us using modern tools.

I don't get it.

> How does trimming remove all the other e-mails in the thread?

I don't get it either.
The matter isn't to remove other e-mails, but to remove noise/redundant information.
That's precisely because the other e-mails are available that full quoting is useless.

> True enough, but THESE rules are made by people sticking to old ways of doing things that
> don't realize these old ways make for a WORSE experience elsewhere.
> [...]
> That is the main mistake here. They don't make the life of _everybody_ easier. They make
> the life of people with newer tools harder so that people with older tools have an easier
> life.

Still don't get it. I use Thunderbird, which I see as modern tool, and I don't see how
"old ways" make a worse experience. Except, perhaps, it might require, on some "modern
tools", a bit more work before hitting send, because they aren't flexible enough to do the
job for you...

I really should stop here... :-)