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[Polytropon]

Allow me to comment on just one aspect of your message:

On Sat, 30 May 2020 22:16:42 -0400, Aryeh Friedman wrote:
> Just a general comment on the "no top posting" "rule" that FreeBSD has no
> one else has such a rule [...]

It's not a rule, it's a recommendation, and there are valid reasons
for this. In many cases, mailing list archives serve as a reference,
and therefore it's helpful to be able to get the desired information
from "the final message" which still contains the initial problem
description. Less complex things surely can be discussed in a
top-posting manner, but more complex things, especially those
that discuss _more than one_ thing in _one_ message, really benefit
from inline posting. And as you can see from my current message,
I can even write something at the top, but not the statement that
refers to what you said at the bottom of your message I am replying
to. :-)



> [...] and many mail clients do top posting by default
> and make interleaving non-trivial (such OP's it appears).

You say this as if it was something good... ;-)



> Additionally
> there is enough top posting being done on today's Internet that everyone
> should be familiar with it and know how to read it in context. 

As I said, it's more _complex_ to read top-posted messages,
especially those that do not contain reply headers and reply
indentation. The "who said what" question cannot be answered
easily, and you cannot easily follow a discusstion _thread_
with top posting. Others say it's unnatural, and just because
some half-baked MUA started with top-posting as a default, it
didn't improve anything.



I'd like to leave those here:



A: Because it messes up 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 in e-mail?

Souce: http://www.idallen.com/topposting.html



And:



A: Yes.
Q: Are you sure?
A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
Q: Why is top posting frowned upon?

I don't have a specific source for that one, sorry.



> So we
> might want to recommend interleaving but it should not be some rule set in
> stone that will get any newbie flamed for not using it, talk about one way
> to turn people off to FreeBSD quickly.

As you can see from the mailing list archives, it is not a rule,
and it does not prevent users from posting to the list, or from
receiving helpful answers. It's just a common consensus, a thing
that you can find in many communities, contexts, and companies:
Some use tabs, some use spaces; some use 4 spaces, others 2, and
others 8. Some use PascalCase, others use_the_underscores, and
others typical camelCase. And where does the { have to be put?
Depending on already existing suggestions, recommendations and
standards ("rules"), if you enter a specific context, it's usually
helpful if you try to adapt to the existing consensus of how to
do certain things.


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...