[ic] Posting Etiquette (was: Assistance Request)

[Simon Swegles]

jimbo wrote:

>
> Are you honestly going to call into question a point of etiquette that 
> has clearly been around far longer than your use of mailing lists? 
> Honestly?
>
> jimbo
> ;-)

I will fold to the pressures obviously in play on this list.
But understand that I was not wantonly flouting 'accepted' etiquette. 
Doing a simple google search on "mailing list etiquette" and reading 
through the first 4 returns made it quite clear that this particular 
point of etiquette is not very important. Not only did none of the 
etiquette guides at the top of the Google search state that it is not 
proper form to top-post, the fourth in the list ( 
http://subversion.tigris.org/mailing-list-guidelines.html ) openly 
states that it is in poor taste to " ... reflexively chide people for 
top-posting." And further states that top-posting is sometimes 
preferable. In all cases that I read, the most important point of 
etiquette when replying with quotes is that the quoted text is clipped 
to the relevant bits. This is exactly what I typically do.

In searching for an etiquette guide specific to this list, I did turn up 
a posting from 2002 ( 
http://www.icdevgroup.org/pipermail/interchange-users/2002-February/017765.html 
) which states that bottom-posting is preferable to "lazy" top-posting. 
Since I have not left in any long, irrelevant passages when quoting, the 
reaction to my non-"lazy" top-posting appears to be nothing more than a 
knee-jerk reactionary "Grrr! Top-posting BAD!"

Regardless, as I said, I have already caved and am now bottom-posting.


And to address another point of mailing list etiquette, the only reason 
this is to the list, rather than one user, is that multiple members of 
the list addressed it in responses to me.