Mr. Shuttleworth gets quote mined (and probably should blog to clear this up)

[W. Scott Lockwood III]

I always top post, unless I feel a need to nest a reply. I always have, since long before I was on the Internet (back in the BBS days). Sometimes, I answer email from my game machine (Thus, the replies from Outlook). If you look at other headers, you'll see that I also post from a Solaris box, a Ubuntu 7.04 box, and a Ubuntu 6.10 box. I stopped replying to things from the Debian boxen. I'm very lazy about quoting. I can generally be very helpful on lists that I’m on, or you might just find me a pain in the ass. I'm not terribly concerned either way. If you are terribly concerned, feel free to plonk me. :-) For the record, I didn't find your message offensive. I'm not trying to be either, I've just decided that life is way too short to BS people anymore. I'm just honest up front about my lack of caring, so the people who are easily set off by that have fair warning and can filter me out.

Regards,
Scott (The non-angry, sore wristed keyboarder)

P.S. My pet peeve? Unnecessary newlines in mail messages. We all have pet peeves. We'll never be able to accommodate them all. YMMV. Shrug.
P.P.S. I have it ('it' being Outlook) set to plain text by default. Surprise, Surprise, Outlook 2007 is broken in that regard, too.

-----Original Message-----
Subject: Re: Mr. Shuttleworth gets quote mined (and probably should blog to clear this up)
 [quote cleaned up and reformatted (as best I could) for consistency]
W. Scott Lockwood III spake thusly on 06/20/2007 06:39 PM:
> On Tue, 2007-19-06 at 21:35 -0300, Derek Broughton wrote: 
> I swear, I'm going to just create a rule to bounce emails regarding Ubuntu. 
> This doesn't happen on any other lists I read, but it happens on all 
> three Ubuntu lists.
> The problem is that the Ubuntu lists are inconsistent from one to the other.
> On some the reply address is the list.  On others it's not.
> Since there's no consistency, it's easier to just click "reply to all"
and let
> the dice fall where they may.  Were there some consistency across
lists here,
> a lot of this would sort itself out.
>> Particularly since someone (Derek?) complained that the other list 
>> wasnt a place for that kind of general chat, but said that sounder was.
>> And is now complaining about it. On Sounder. J
IMO, those complaints are both valid. And while we're on the subject of complaints.... think of the following not so much as complaints, but helpful hints. :) :
	1. Unless a mailing list *specifically* states that HTML is acceptable (or encouraged), please do *not* post to a mailing list with HTML (as you did here).
	Why not? Well just for starters, many Email clients can't read HTML messages (this is especially true in the world of Linux/Unix/*bsd, where console-based software -e.g. the Mutt Email client- is very popular).
	It is *very* difficult to properly quote a message that was posted in HTML. I had to play around with this reply quite a bit to make it halfway sane.
	2. Please take the time to learn to the conventions/traditions of the list you are posting to (one does this by lurking for a while before posting). On most lists and newsgroups (sane ones anyway - sounder would be among those), replies are put at the bottom of the message (not the top as you did), which enables one to easily follow the thread
(conversation) regardless of what message s/he's reading from it.
	"Top Posting" vs "Bottom Posting" will probably always be never-ending debate. I myself prefer the latter, but my best advice is to go with what is the most common on the list or newsgroup you are in (although I myself don't take my own advice in this instance ;> ).
	3. Try to only quote relevant text. Trim as much as you can while still "making sense" in your reply.
	Signatures are not relevant. Most good email clients (Microsoft Outlook has *never* fit into this category) will snip signatures automatically when you reply.  So in the case of Outlook, you need to do this manually.
	NOTE: I snipped the signature you had quoted in your reply, in my rely to you..
And speaking of text that is not relevant...:
...most definitely qualifies (IMO) as being not relevant.
And speaking of my opinion.. :)...
I'm always amused when posts from Microsoft Outlook show up on Linux mailing lists. :) They practically *scream* "Hey, I sent this with Microsoft Outlook, see!!!!"
For the record (unless otherwise stated) these opinions just aren't my own. I learned this from years of participation on mailing lists and newsgroups (OK, I lied, I've been on lists for years, but I learned this stuff within a moth or two from when I first began participating).
Do a Google search on "mailing list netiquette|etiquette" and you'll see links to oodles of pages covering what I've said here (and then some).
Of course, the message you're reading now could be considered a "flame"
(which was not my intent) which is bad netiquette as well. However, I'm actually trying to be helpful and (I hope) reasonably polite about it. :)
Thanks for your time.