Foo: Re: Re[2]: [ATM] over&under correction.

[Woodchuck <djv@bedford.net>]

Offered in a spirit of collegial cooperation and helpfulness.
No personal insults intended.

On Tue, 12 Jul 2005, Bob May wrote:

& Richard, would you kindly use the correct scheme for posting a reply to the
& list?  A "Re[2]" isn't a valid reply prefix to the subject line for a start.

There are no "valid" formats for this.  There are only ones that you like
or dislike, unless you have an RFC to quote at me, one that uses the
words "shall" and "must".

If you want to get picky, well, expect to be pecked.

& This kicks you out of the threading system and makes it a lot more difficult

Not necessarily.  Please obtain better threading software.

& to follow what you are talking about.  Without following threading rules,

You should be helping the luser to configure his software or to
acquire software that "works", rather than yelling at him to alter
things he does not understand.  Mistakes such as he is making are,
unlike the mistakes that you make and I am about to flame you for
infra, doubtless defaults or attractive options of lame software.

& you are just saying things without anybody knowing where you are coming
& from, thus the need of several here to have quotes from previous posts so
& that they can understand something of what it is being discussed.

Another reason for requesting both the citation/attribution line
	"On Tue, 12 Jul 2005, Bob May wrote:"
with ~DATE~ and ~NAME~, not some cute, catchy ring-tone inspired
phrase in Old High Klingon, and relevant quotes from preceding posts
is simply to make the current post intelligible on its own, and
possibly shorter.

Most MUAs only display the text of one email message at a time.  If
you are commenting on something, the reader cannot refer to what
you are commenting unless you have redundantly requoted it, or by
exiting your message, opening it (having first found it, in my case,
hunting through a backup folder with grep, looking for a Message-ID
extracted from your message by re-parameterizing my MUA to show
obscure headers, and cutting/pasting the Message-ID to a command
shell), or dialing up the archives, instancing a web-browser, and
launching a snipe hunt there), reading it, closing it, reopening
yours, possibly repeating the process.  This is why, since the dawn
of writing, scribes have had recourse to marginalia and glosses.
Glosses are exquisitely easy to accomplish with electronic text
editors.  Why would you deny us the progress of six thousand years?

Your posts are readable mostly because others in the thread do not
follow your example.  Sad, but true at least for me.

You're really a pot blacking the kettle when it comes to "posting
etiquette".

0) Some people don't use threading.  Threading is not a requirement
of email. (Show me the RFC).  I don't.  I sort by Subject: line,
one of 20 ways that my MUA (pine) can sort a folder.  My MUA is
clever enough to ignore [rR][eE]: in subject headers when sorting.
It is not clever enough to ignore the equivalent of "Re:" in certain
other languages, though.  I hope you won't be demanding that those
whose default language is not en-us change their MUAs.

1) You almost never attribute.  If a post of yours is worth saving,
then one must hunt down its antecedents and save them, too.  Without
technical knowledge of email, one cannot tell to whom your posts
are replies, or if they are thread starters.  Some people manually
use "Re:" to start any subject line.  They are lame, but they are
many.

2) You almost never quote.  If a post of yours is worth saving,...

3) You never format your posts to under 72 columns.
.This means that a non-standard xterm must be opened, or significantly
.unergonomic line widths like
.this must be endured to read your posts. I would like to suggest
.that you follow an old rule
.and view your work on the minimum equipment that your readers are
.expected to have: namely
.a 80colx24row VT100 terminal or emulator using a fixed-width 7-bit
.font.  Not to format one's
.post to teletype width is arrogant, it arrogates the user's terminal to
.your arbitrary standards.  It is
.in the same class of bad manners as a full-screen pop-up ad.

4) You're always making references to rules that, frankly, are
obscure and apply to software agents, not humans.  Many users of
this list are simply too lame to set a quote character. Insisting
that people learn "computer science" [sic] to satisfy what seem to
them rules that *software* should be implementing will not
succeed, unless you have powers over the users beyond exhortation.
Powers like firing them or hitting them in the face.  Else you rant
quixotically.  Long experience has taught me this.

5) You top-post.

6) You know better.

7) You assert you're right -- and assert often that everyone else
is wrong, a situation that can cause observers to smile.

8) Threading is a MUA function, not a human function.  It depends
on more than Subject: headers.  The user has two obligations: to
use reasonable software, and to reply by "reply"-ing in his MUA-
specific way, rather than initiating a post de novo.

9) You start paragraphs flush with the left column, yet do
not leave a blank line between them.  This can confuse
industry standard formatting software, besides violating
Mrs. Grundy's Typing Rules.  If your posts are ever agglomerated
elsewhere, they will require more manual editing than should
be necessary.

A second reason for the exasperating character of your posts is
that I have developed the pernicious habit of deleting posts once
they are read.  Thus, unless I have been away from the machine for
weeks, it is very unlikely that the antecedent to your post is still
available on my machine.  Thus your post often becomes one big
"pronoun", completely baffling.  You write for the archives, not
an active mailing list, in other words.

& Next, you didn't use any quote character (the > character at the beginning
& of each line) when doing your quote and thus it becomes a bit difficult to
& understand where your comments start and stop and the other person's
& comments exist.

This is probably due to the pernicious use of rich text or other
Microsoft and Apple kakotopic dysfunctionality.  There may be color
codes present.  These are visible if the luser is given to reading
his mail with a web browser, a practice akin to killing flies with
a cannon.  They are not VT-240 color codes, of course.  Perish the
thought.  They are probably html and have fled thither, where the
woodbine twineth.

There is no "standard" for this quote character.  Just to be
obnoxious, I've used the ampersand in this message.  Let's see if
I can get MicroshaftWhatever to crash.

& My, aren't we getting into a royal pissing contest on this subject!  Let's
& all vote to crawl back to where we came from on this and follow the rulse
& for posting??

Your rules imply use of certain proprietary software that is
unavailable, distasteful or forbidden to many.  And you don't follow
a lot of rules very well yourself.  I have a feeling that you have
made up your own rules.  The ones you hint at here are not those
I've seen practiced elsewhere.  I've been looking for thirty years.
You're the first "threading nanny" I've found.

Moreover the list mungs From: headers (RFC-discouraged) making
replying to the list messages clumsy and lame, and making these
messages *technical violations of statute law in the USA, since
this munged header obscures the true source of the message*, just
as spammers do.  This may squeak by the relevant RFC, but it is
certainly not best practice.  This may be the sole surviving mailing
list in which a simple reply to a post generates mail to the sender
of the post rather than to the list.  This means that to reply in
the normal fashion, one must "reply to all" and then delete the
original poster's email address.  (This is not your doing, I expect.)

Top-posting is particularly pernicious and annoying.  It violates
the concept of a "reply".  It is a kind of baboon-pecking order
assertiveness, the sort of thing that is important in *.edu.

Did I mention that top-posting is a vice?

& Bob May
& bobmay@nethere.com
& http://nav.to/bobmay
& http://bobmay.astronomy.net

Here followed the vicious fruit, the natural consequence of the
character weakness called "top-posting": a quote for no obvious
reason of an entire email:


& ----- Original Message -----
& From: Richard <cnc@cncservo.co.uk>
& To: Scott Milligan <atm@atmlist.net>

This address is bogus.  "atm@atmlist.net" is not Mr Milligan's
mailing address.  Please fix or replace your broken software.  This
may well ruin some lamer's "addressbook" or confuse spammers.

& Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 10:01 AM
& Subject: Re[2]: [ATM] over&under correction.

This is *too much*.  It is lame to quote all this.

I also notice that your broken software produced bogus RE: text
that you flamed others for elsewhere.  Please fix; this requires
actually looking at the subject line in your reply and manually
trimming it.

& > Hi Scott,
& >
& > Monday, July 11, 2005, 5:41:38 PM, you wrote:

You should fix your MUA to replace "you" with some derivative of the
name of the original poster.

 ... deletia ...

Dave the Woodchuck  "I can do this, too"

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