topposting (was: colourization in ls command)

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 2004-10-12 14:06, FreeBSD questions mailing list <FreeBSD at amadeus.demon.nl> wrote:
> >Have a read of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-posting
>
> I find it quite irritating that i have to scroll down everytime I read
> an email.

If you spend a few seconds, every time you post, to trim the material you're
replying to, removing signatures, cutting off parts that are irrelevant to
your reply, you shouldn't have to scroll through pages of text to read the
reply.

Bottom-posting works well only if you combine it with a careful style of
quoted text trimming.  If you just copy/paste the entire message you're
replying to and add a couple of lines after its end, it's silly, annoying and
a total waste of bandwidth; exactly like top-posting and quoting the replied
messages in its entirety.

> Is top posting a policy on the FBSD list?

Yes, it's the norm.  There are notable exceptions that show up from time to
time[1], but the majority of the posters to all the freebsd.org mailing lists
use bottom-posting.  You're not going to be shouted at for top-posting, but it
*is* annoying, so it would be nice if you didn't.

[1] Jordan Hubbard, a very respectful and promiment members of the FreeBSD
community, uses top-posting.  I've seen others top-post too, like Matt Dillon,
Julian Elischer, etc.