[OT] Why do people detest top posting so much?

[Ray Parrish]

Michael Haney wrote:
> Being new to the community of Linux users and having seen what people
> on the outside think of us I can sadly say that this sort of thing
> only serves to perpetuate the mystic people outside the Linux
> community believe.  That mystic is that we're fanatical fanboys/girls
> with really short tempers who fly off on a hissy fit at the slightest
> provocation and have no tolerance for whatsoever for noobs.  Indeed,
> there are people, even here, who are like that, but its not something
> that's exclusive to the Linux world.  Being deeply involved in the
> anime community I can tell you there are people like that there also,
> but because there is so much animosity between diehard Windows and
> Linux supporters our community is put under the microscope so to speak
> more so than the anime community ever is.  In other words, when a few
> bad apples cause trouble it makes all of us look bad.
>
> So bad attitudes towards people top posting rather than bottom posting
> or sarcastic replies to newbie questions or people who post in HTML
> only serves to prove what the Windows fanatics say about us.
Hello,

I'm just guessing here, but from what you've said it seems obvious that 
you have never participated in the unmoderated Microsoft newsgroups on 
the Microsoft news servers.

The groups there abound with the type of behavior you outline above, and 
also add trolls who try to bait people into arguments as well. There are 
also those who impersonate Microsoft MVPs, and attempt to get others to 
download software from them that is probably infected. [one guy 
consistently answers almost all questions with "try my fix such and such 
program that will fix your problem", no matter what the such and such 
problem was, and always gives the same url for the supposed "fix".] His 
url always contains pcbutts as the domain 'though, so he's easy to spot 
no matter what username he is currently posting under, which changes often.

Then there are the constant arguments between a couple of people who 
keep accusing the other of abusing their reputation, or accusing the 
other of impersonating Microsoft MVPs, the threads of which go on 
forever, and have to be skipped to get anywhere in reading the groups.

I've found the Ubuntu User's group to be quite tame and well behaved in 
comparison. 8-)

Later, Ray Parrish

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