[pmwiki-users] please don't use formatted email

[christian.ridderstrom at gmail.com]

On Mon, 17 Apr 2006, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 15, 2006 at 03:44:50PM +0100, Richard Brown wrote:
> > On 14 Apr 2006, at 16:06, Chris Cox wrote:
> > > Didn't mean to fuel a fire... it's just that a complaint
> > > was registered about posting style and the post was
> > > a "top post"... I found that to be funny.
> > >
> > > I'm human.  I can easily deal with a plethora of
> > > posting styles.  My guess is that other people
> > > can deal with it as well.
> > >
> > I have to admit that I don't like top-replies and I don't like html. So 
> > I just delete away.
> > [...]
> > Over to you Patrick on policy or any other list statement. If Patrick 
> > doesn't want to put a statement in it's because he is happy with the 
> > way the list is run!
> 
> I'm amazed how long this thread has wrong.  It appears some sort
> of statement from me is indeed needed.

Out of curiosity... is it really supposed to be "wrong" in the paragraph
above? (I'm curious since I can't figure out a simple typo that could 
result in "wrong", and I'm not familiar with any other meaning of "wrong" 
that makes sense here).

Anyway, would it make sense to paste a part of your post to some wiki page
for future reference? Perhaps

	http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/MailingLists

/Christian


> Like PmWiki, HTML, and all sorts of other protocols, I tend to follow
> the "be liberal in what you accept and strict in what you produce"
> guideline.  I think the mailing list should do the same.  I definitely 
> don't want to make people feel unwelcome simply because they aren't 
> aware of various forms of email etiquette.
> 
> In general I prefer plain text emails, and inline responses
> (with liberal deletion of quoted text).  But these aren't hard-and-fast
> rules -- there are times when top-posting can be acceptable, e.g., 
> when making a relatively short response to an entire message as 
> opposed to the individual points within the message.  For example,
> 
>     I think everything said in this thread is wrong.
> 
>     On December 25, 2005 Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
>     > ....
> 
> is probably better than having to get to the bottom of
> 
>     On December 25, 2005 Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
>     > ......
>     > [300 lines of quoted text, none of it cut]
>     > ......
> 
>     I think everything said above is wrong.
> 
> When responding to a message, I also tend to respond in the same
> form as the original, so that if someone top-posts in a message
> to me, then I top-post back (unless I'm replying to individual
> points of the message, in which case I'll use inlined responses).
> 
> As far as HTML vs plain text is concerned, I think it's useful
> to advise people that plain text is preferred, but we don't
> have to be strict about it.  If it's inconvenient for someone
> to post in plain text (and there are times where this is the 
> case) I'd still prefer to see their post in HTML as opposed to
> not-at-all.
> 
> I like for PmWiki to be as forgiving and accepting an environment
> as it can be, and this extends to the mailing list.  We can advise
> people of better ways to do things, but failing to do so shouldn't
> be cause for exclusion.  
> 
> Individuals are of course free to do what they want -- if 
> someone wants to ignore all HTML or top-posted emails, that's 
> perfectly okay.  Ultimately we can rely on community standards
> to take effect -- over time, people who fail to follow the standards
> tend to get ignored.  
> 
> (Side story: On some other lists I subscribe to, I
> automatically delete or ignore posts from some authors simply 
> because I know from past history that over half of their posts
> will quote a long sequence of messages, and then have a short
> one paragraph (and unhelpful) response at the bottom.  If they
> at least put their stuff at the top I'd at least scan it,
> but as it is now I figure if it's not worth their time to make
> it easy for me to read, it's not worth my time to read it.)
> 
> Pm
> 

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44               http://www.md.kth.se/~chr