Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 11:09:53 +0100 From: Cliff Sarginson <cliff@raggedclown.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Email Etiquette on this list Message-ID: <20011129110953.A1059@raggedclown.net> In-Reply-To: <15365.16317.286173.652889@guru.mired.org> References: <200111281441.AA430047422@cshore.com> <15365.16317.286173.652889@guru.mired.org>
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On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 01:49:17PM -0600, Mike Meyer wrote: > MATTHEW.GRAYBOSCH <MATTHEW.GRAYBOSCH@cshore.com> types: > > "In that case, why bother sending the previous writing *at all*? If > > people really want to read it, it's in the archives." > > > > The only time *I* want to bother with the archives is to avoid asking a question that has already been answered. I'd prefer to see what you're replying to as I'm reading your reply. > > Ack. Please teach your mail reader to wrap lines at a reasonable > length. Under 100 would be nice. Under 80 would be even nicer. > And < 72 would be perfect :) Some people have poor eyesight and need to use a larger type font. > I suspect most people agree with you. I suspect that most want to read > a discussion as a discussion, not a collection of paragraphs in > vaguely reverse chronological order. Taking that as a given, proper > etiquette - which you use to show your respect for the people you are > dealing with - is to edit the included message into a discussion. > I agree with this. I think there are two problems. One is editing a message intelligently to keep context, this is quite an art in itself. The second is when threads get too long and basically end up where no-one except the prinicipal protagonists of the discussion remember what the hell it was about in the first place. Recently a thread here reached more than 100 messsages. I stopped reading them but kept them out of curiosity to see how large the thread would grow. That is *way* too big, such discussions should be moved to a private or more appropriate place in my view. > Failing to do that is telling everying you don't think they - or > possibly your writing - are worth the effort involved in creating a > coherent document. Just dumping in the text of the message you are > replying to tells them you don't even think the disk space and network > bandwidth they are paying for is worthy of any consideration. > I think the usual exception to this would be a response to a very short message, when I think bottom posting is appropriate. Top-posting is counter-intuitive. The problem is what do you do if you are replying to a message that already contains top-posted replies ? > So if you can't take the time to turn the message you are sending into > a coherent document, at least be polite enough to spare us the burden > of the text that isn't worth your time to edit. > One other thing that can be helpful is if someone has mailed a message which is in very broken English and it is perhaps not quite obvious what is being asked. I think it can be worth the time to briefly paraphrase the question to make sure that you make it clear what question you think you are answering. This acknowledges that someone who has made the effort and struggled to put a question into English is sure he/she has been understood correctly...bearing in mind that reading a foreign language is a lot easier than writing in it (believe me I know!). -- Regards Cliff To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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