Re: [Gusdev-gusdev] mailing list protocol?

[Steve F. <st...@pc...>]

I think i am ok with interspersed responses... as long as they leave the 
whole original there.  its the cutting that is the real problem.  i just 
don't want to have to dig around among old mails to find the rest of the 
thread.

steve

steve

Jonathan Crabtree wrote:

>
> Steve-
>
> Steve Fischer wrote:
>
>> I have another suggestion to add:
>>
>> that we always add our reponse to the top of the message, and never 
>> cut out parts of it.  ie, that going to any individual mail in the 
>> thread contains the entire thread up till that point.  otherwise, it 
>> is a pain to go searching for the parts of the thread that have been 
>> cut out.
>
>
> I'm not sure I agree with this; top-posting is generally considered a bad
> thing because it's far easier to understand someone's response 
> (particularly
> when they are responding to several distinct points) when the 
> different parts
> of the response are interjected at the correct points in the quoted text
> (with a blank line before and after to make it easy to find the new 
> material.)
>
> Similarly, I think that the generally-accepted practice is to allow
> responders to excise parts of the quoted message as they see fit (e.g.,
> if they only want to comment on a small part of it.)  I don't think the
> tracking problem is that bad, because as long as we follow the 
> previously-
> described protocol for replies, you should be able to track the e-mail
> thread using a threaded e-mail reader (I don't use this feature too much,
> but I know that Mozilla supports it.)
>
> I'm pretty sure that the above reflects the accepted wisdom for Usenet
> posting etiquette, and I believe that it probably also applies to e-mails
> on the gusdev list, which is effectively a newsgroup of sorts.  Search
> google for "top-posting" and you'll see a bunch of articles on the 
> subject.
>
> Jonathan