Mail etiquette (was: What is this mean by this term)

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

[heavily trimmed, subject line clarified, format breakage recovered]

On Thursday, 18 January 2007 at 16:31:41 +1100, Murray Taylor wrote:
> On  Thursday, 18 January 2007 11:48 AM, Dak Ghatikachalam wrote:
>> What if someone is emailing from a thread while I am replying at
>> the same time, would that not happen ? Would I be getting complains
>> again that I am "top-posting"
>
> Top-posting defined simply ...
>
> A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
> A: Top-posting.
> Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

Yes, that's a nice one.

> Unfortunately all Micro$lop 'standard' email clients and a few
> others put the cursor at the top of the email, so the bad habit has
> developed across the world both domestically and in businesses, to
> write there, rather than continuing the email thread at the bottom.

I think the biggest problem with Microsoft MUAs is not where they
position the cursor, but the difficulty they cause in editing the
text.  My editor also positions the cursor at the very top when I
reply to a message.  But it also makes it possible to tidy things up.

"Top posting" is only one issue.  Others of great importance are
trimming your posts, not breaking the lines into tiny fragments, and
not writing one-line paragraphs.  Your .sig is a good example of
things that people should remove from replies.

Greg
--
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
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