[ubuntu-uk] Moan -- Top Posting (was "Apps for kids")

[Sean Miller]

On 7 August 2010 08:14, Joe O'Dell <joseph.odell at googlemail.com> wrote:
> For reference, for anyone that is actually bothered by mailing list
> etiquette, here is the Ubuntu Mailing List
> Guidelines: http://www.ubuntu.com/support/community/mailinglists

Which says...

---quote---
"Proper quoting:

Proper quoting is very important on mailing lists, to ensure that it
is easy to follow the conversation. There are four fundamental rules:

    *

      When replying to an email, ensure that the email which you are
replying to is indented with a symbol such as > or | (this is usually
done from the preferences of your email client - most should do this
by default).
    *

      When quoting, attribute the quoted text to the person who wrote
it (again, most email clients will do this by default). Be careful to
attribute the correct text to the correct person.
    *

      Write your email underneath the email which you are replying to.
    *

      Tailor your reply to fit the text which you are replying to. Do
not quote the whole of the previous email - remove any unnecessary
text. To avoid confusion, it's often a good idea to replace removed
text with a brief indication that something has been removed, like
[snip]."
---end quote---

In other words, the Ubuntu Mailing List Guidelines specifically state
what people should be doing.

And we've now had one person do it several times this morning (and
apologise for it in the same post) and another deliberately say "I
can't be bothered to cut from this second window on my Android phone,
so I bet you'll get top posting" which (of course) we did.

Can't we police this a little?  As it's starting to annoy me...

And the PROBLEM is that when you let guidelines be ignored 90% of the
time then "everybody jumps on the bandwagon" and things will get much
worse for those who don't want e-mails 200 lines long where only the
first 20 words are relevant.

And a "quiet private e-mail" wouldn't have initiated a discussion,
which is what I wanted to do.  Because it's not just Neil Greenwood
who does it... David Jones just illustrated this, with a particularly
"wind up" e-mail where he top posted loads and loads of stuff "because
he could" -- that's not good, is it?

Sean