Why top-posting is bad

[Rahul Siddharthan]

Brad Knowles said on Aug 30, 2004 at 10:59:59:
> At 10:42 AM +0530 2004-08-30, Rahul Siddharthan wrote:
> > If you want to go about correcting the world's email habits, you
> > should (a) make sure that the problem you're seeing is clearly
> > referenced in the web page you link to, (b) if that's not the case,
> > say what the problem is.
> 
> 	Again, we get back to the problem of it being impossible to 
> enumerate all the potential permutations and combinations of various 
> different things that people might do wrong in formatting a message.

Tough.  You're the one who's being picky about what you will or will
not read.

> 	If you think you can do better, I would encourage you to do so -- 
> lead by example. 

Sure.  Here's my algorithm: 

1. In private mail, I really don't care, unless the formatting is
   truly egregious.  On such (very rare) occasions I've prodded the
   sender a bit.

2. On public mailing lists, I know perfectly well that others will
   complain louder than I do, so I don't care.

So just cool off a bit.  And if a message is necessary at all, may I
suggest something a bit dignified like

"On public mailing lists, properly formatted mails are helpful: see
http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html"

And, if it's a non-obvious formatting error, say what the problem is
rather than leave the reader wondering "What did I do?" or "What's
this Grog guy ranting about?"  If you can spend time whining about it
you can spend 20 seconds writing about it.  Plus it's better for the
blood pressure.

Unless you like to encourage the typical linuxer's opinion that the
typical BSD user is an arrogant, pompous, obnoxious jerk.

Rahul