Top posting - was Re: sendmail vulnerability

[pll at lanminds.com]

>>>>> On 6 Mar 2003, "Jeff" == Jeff Macdonald wrote:

  Jeff> Mike, You seem to be a mission.

You know, I've thought and called mike a lot of things over the 
years, but I've never considered him a mission :)

  Jeff> I've done top posting because I'm to lazy to delete all the
  Jeff> text that Evolution places in the message by default.

So what you're saying is that you're also selfish enough to be 
completely inconsiderate of the majority of us on the list who follow 
the various rules of good netiquette and that you're personal 
convenience should over-ride the social norms of this community?

  Jeff> Perhaps the answer is a smarter mail client that somehow
  Jeff> prevents top posting?

How about a more considerate user who respects the customs of the 
community, and maybe one who can properly configure their mail client 
properly?

  Jeff> However, I do know that my wife gets confused when comments
  Jeff> are intermingled with the original message.

You wife is not on this list, so I find this statement to be 
completely irrelevent.  What your wife or anyone else finds confusing 
has no bearing to the practices adhered to on this list.  If you wish 
to be part of any community, you need to follow the rules to which 
that community subscribes.  If you don't, there are consequences to 
pay.  Here, you'll likely be ignored, filtered out by something like 
procmail, or, for the worst offenders, barred from the list (though 
no one has ever reveived that here to my knowledge).

But, since you brought it up, I've found that most people who are
new[1] to the 'net and have not bothered to read up on the good
practices of netiquette both 'get confused' as you say, and usually
don't follow the rules.  

Please read:

	ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/rfc/rfc1855.txt
and
	
	http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html

I don't mean to sound unusually harsh, however, the idea that your 
personal laziness is more important than being considerate to others 
in this community I find totally intolerable.  Please be nice, and 
please play nicely with the other children in this sandbox.

Thanks,
Paul

[1] By 'new to the net' I mean anyone who has come on to the net since about 1997.