List etiquette question

[Dave Cross]

On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 22:01:15 -0500, jack wallen
<jlwallen at monkeypantz.net> wrote:
> as a top poster i'll add just one thing that seems to be lost on this
> list - the vast majority of people reading email today have been trained
> (or ruined) by M$ "rules". whenever i "bottom post" to most people they
> immediately reply back asking why i replied with a "blank" reply. when i
> explain to them that the reply is beneath their email they simply say
> that it doesn't make sense - they know what they said to me.
> 
> so i've just become accustomed to quoting their text below mine. if
> they've no idea what i'm replying to they can just scroll down a bit and
> find out.

I'm sure that most of us spend a lot of our lives exchanging emails
with people who have only ever used top-posting. I guess you just need
to decide whether or not it's worth the effort in trying to educate
them in what is (in my opinion) a superior method (i.e. snipping text
and interleaving your replies). In most cases I've decided it's not
worth that effort and I go with top-posting if I'm emailing people who
expect it.

> and since the vast majority of people i email are not old-school as
> others i doubt that i'll be changing my quoting preferences anytime
> soon.
>
> to each his or her own i say.

But I think the important is to adapt to the local customs, not to
stick religiously to your favourite method.

Here (as on most technical mailing lists) the custom is for snipped,
interleaved posting. So that's what you should use.

Dave...