Klarinet Archive - Posting 000060.txt from 2005/12
From: "George Huba" <ghuba@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] re[kl]: Trimming
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 18:09:27 -0500
Mark,
I think that what we have here is a basic conflict between the way things
used to be done back when the Internet was a novelty and only techies and
academics were using email and the way that Microsoft changed the way
business uses email by their Outlook programs which are the defacto email
standard. The bottom line is that when King Kong enters the game, they can
change the rules.
Many business folks are used to hitting reply with the original materials
effectively appended as a running record. Most read bottom to top on email
exchanges if they enter the conversation late. Earlier comments are treated
like an "Appendix" or running record. If you want to comment on a specific
point, then you intersperse your text with the original.
I think the approach you outlined -- do it your way and don't expect
everyone to agree with you -- is a very good feature of this list and a
strategy that works well with intelligent, opened minded people who can
figure out whether they should read from top to bottom like the old-timers
like to mandate or bottom to top as is current business practice that most
of us use on the majority of our emails.
My own original comments about "Internet police" were a reaction to someone
dictating rules which just don't fit what people do here and in other
places. I greatly appreciate the flexibility, intelligence, and humor with
which you administer this list and the Clarinet BB.
I apologize to you and the list for my comments in reaction to the original
post which may have served to flame this issue. After 20+ years, I should
know better than to get involved in stuff like this.
George
P.S. I have been using the Internet since virtually its inception, and more
than 20 years as I can remember these kinds of arguments from 1984 or 1985
on Unix lists and others when I was administering my first Unix system and
relied on lists for lots of technical help. Those arguments made more sense
back then -- long before Outlook and when there was severely limited
bandwidth and we were all struggling with BAD UNIX editors and email
programs -- than they do now. For the life of me, I can't imagine why, at
this time, people use a digest format rather than just receiving individual
emails and automatically routing them to some specific folder like Clarinet
where they can be seen in sequence.
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Charette [mailto:charette@-----.org]
Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2005 2:09 PM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: Re: [kl] re[kl]: Trimming
Gary Van Cott wrote:
> I agree. I have to honestly say that in more than 10 years of using
> lists, I have never seen anything the suggested adding posts at the
> bottom was preferred in any context
Every list I'm on prefers posting below trimmed text. But then again,
almost all the lists I belong to are technical and have been around for
25 years or more (I've only been using lists for the past 20 years or
so). Top posting on many of those lists will start a flame war _and_
cause the offender to be ignored by the old-timers. It's tradition that
has become etiquette. Perhaps the newer lists don't have the tradition.
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