FreeBSD Cert

[@lbutlr]

On 30 May 2020, at 20:16, Aryeh Friedman <aryeh.friedman at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just a general comment on the "no top posting" "rule" that FreeBSD has no one else has such a rule

It is not a rule per se, and it is not unique to this mailing list. Most mailing list and newsgroups encourage trimming posts (as I did) and replying in line (as I am) as it makes posts much easier to read and to follow, especially when looking at archived posts.

> and many mail clients do top posting by default

That is because Microsoft decide this was a great idea and then many companies and vendors wrote software that relied on top posting for the CSR systems. When you are having a conversation type exchange it is much better to interleave your comments. This dates back decades, and predates Windows' existence.

> and make interleaving non-trivial (such OP's it appears).  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.

The issue is knowing what particular part of a post is being referred to.

Imagine if that line was at the top of this post. Would you have ANY idea what I was talking about? At all?

But the tl;dr is that you follow the conventions of the group you are in. If you go to a company that has a style guide for code, you follow that style guide. Your format and comment code as that organization decided. If you work for The New Yorker, you write coöperate, because that is their style. If your team is all saying jiff you are probably going to need to start saying jiff.

> So we might want to recommend interleaving but it should not be some rule set in
> stone

It is not. But you will notice you get fewer replies if people see your posts as hard to read. I know that I mostly ignore anything that is top posted or sent with HTML styles ot attached images. And not just in this mailing list, but pretty much across the board. O lee[ ,y computer in dark mode, so when someone shoes yo enforce black text on a white background, for example, I usually DELETE that post immediately since the white background blinds me and affects my (poor) vision for several minutes.

So you are free to top post, but others are free to complain about you top-posting. If you continue to top-post, you will get fewer replies. But no one is going to come over and arrest you or fine you for top-posting.

> that will get any newbie flamed for not using it, talk about one way to turn people off to FreeBSD quickly.

That's your choice, but the standards for this newsgroup have nothing to do with FreeBSD software, so that would be a very silly reason to stop using it. But you be you.



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I believe you can joke about anything. -- George Carlin