[CS-FSLUG] A Favor to Ask

[Fred A. Miller]

On Fri January 28 2005 2:26 am, Leon Brooks wrote:
> On Friday 28 January 2005 13:56, Andrew Minerd wrote:
> > if you're replying to a long email, please "snip" and reply
> > towards the top of your email, instead of after the countless
> > paragraphs of the original.
>
> My technique is, as here, to quote _just_ the relevant paragraph(s) and
> then reply to each piece as I go. This is a habit inherited from
> limited-bandwidth limited-screen-size FidoNet days and has the effect

Hehehehehehe.........I ran FidoNet WAY BACK on an old KayPro 2X. 'Had a lot 
more hair then also. :)

> of keeping the message readable in isolation. It also operates like a
> conversation, bringing the topic back to the forebrain of the reader
> without boring them or burying them in detail.

Quite right!

> Top-posting (TOFU) has the disadvantage of being in reverse-polish, and
> our brains don't work that way - and even diligent trimmers forget to
> trim stuff that they don't see. Worse, very few top-posters trim at
> all, which can quickly bog down an ordinary mail server, to say nothing
> of a mailing *list* server.

Yes. SOME moderated lists MANDATE bottom posting or don't post. SOME moderated 
newsgroups the same.

> Bottom posting has no advantages over the other two methods, except that
> (if they're still awake) the reader has total context by the time they
> arrive at the response. I find bottom posting to be very tedious to
> wade through, and generally prefer top posting to it (which says a lot,
> 'coz I loathe top-posting).

Most often, if there's a long post and the response is at the top, I just 
delete and don't respond.

[snip]

> Quoting it all sucks, quoting none of it sucks even more. It's dead easy
> to get right in KMail, reasonably easy with most MUAs and hard with
> MS-Outlook, so a secondary lesson is: don't use MS-Outlook if you can
> possibly avoid it.

You mean "LookOut," don't you?

Fred

-- 
The only bug free software from MickySoft is still shrink-wrapped
in their warehouse..."