Posting etiquette: Was: Getting error message when launching X-Window apps in Cygwin

[Jack <ostroffjh at users dot sourceforge dot net>]

On 2/9/19 9:46 AM, L A Walsh wrote:
> If a list is a conversational list where people think everyone
> reads everything, then maybe chronological might be better, but
> even many forums will show you the newer messages first.
The behavior/display of a list of messages does not have to be the same 
as the behavior within each message.
> Does that help or make sense, or should I have read through the next
> 700 messages to see if you found a solution to you situation.
While I don't know of any forum that does threading, most email programs 
do, so replies to a request for help SHOULD be listed directly below it 
in most email programs.  (certainly true in (most of) the ones I use.)
> But it could be very confusing if people always started at the
> beginning of their email and read downwards.
Another part of the etiquette of bottom posting lists is to trim what 
you quote down to what you are answering/replying to. [Normally I would 
use ... or "snip" but here I think I've kept enough for context.]  What 
"I" find really annoying is those lists where people with post a reply, 
without quoting ANY of the original question - so you get messages like 
"Click the third link on that page." with no context.  That's possibly 
OK if you see it displayed right under the first message, but quite 
meaningless otherwise.  I agree that I don't want to scroll through 
pages of previously read stuff to see the new content, but if it's not 
relevant to the "current" message, why not trim it out?

You can manage long discussions by either having the entire history in 
one file/message, or by keeping the entire list of messages and keeping 
each message short and to the current point. In the first case, it may 
be easier to top-post new content, but then you have no reason to keep 
old messages, as long as nothing does get trimmed.  I think difficulties 
arise when mixing the two approaches, which is probably inevitable with 
email lists which get archived and even more so for cases like usenet, 
where you can either post or email.

I generally consider it as "local custom."  Some lists/forums want one, 
some want the other.  As long as it's made clear, why not follow the 
requested style?  (Another way to look at is as religion, which suggests 
there is little point trying to change people's minds.)

Jack

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