Re: OT: Top Posting
On Tue, May 14, 2024 at 05:01:31PM +0000, fxkl47BF@protonmail.com wrote:
> how many times has this top post crap been dug up
> don't y'all have any thing better to do
It's never going to stop. We have a clash of two cultures here.
The first culture are Unix users who grew up with Internet email and
Usenet news. For people in this culture, there is a well-defined set
of "netiquette" rules -- plain text messages, inline quoting with "> "
citation characters, lines limited to ~72 characters, etc.
For users in this first group, email is often read and composed on a
terminal, or a terminal emulator. Characters are displayed in a
fixed-width font. ASCII art is possible, albeit frowned upon as
juvenile.
The second culture are Windows users who grew up with Microsoft products
in their school or workplace. In this culture, top-posting is the norm,
and inline quoting is nigh impossible. Messages are often sent in either
HTML or markdown format. Whole paragraphs are presented as single lines.
Explicit line breaks are only used between paragraphs.
Users in this second group typically use Microsoft Outlook, or a
web-based mail user agent in a graphical environment. Fonts are
variable-width, and any ASCII art or tables will not align properly.
Now, normally when these cultures clash, we're able to point to the
Debian netiquette guidelines, and move on.
In this particular instance, we've got a person from the second culture
who seems to have no idea that other cultures exist, or that a mailing
list might not adhere to their own expectations. This person is acting
belligerantly, and will not listen to gentle reminders.
The best course of action in this case is to drop it, but pride can make
people do the wrong things sometimes.
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