From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Nov 23 16:06:43 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from heliophagous.homenet.firedrake.org (unknown [62.49.100.206]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 59C0432C17B for ; Wed, 23 Nov 2005 16:06:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from roger by heliophagous.homenet.firedrake.org with local (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian)) id 1Ef4dK-00061n-00 for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 00:06:38 +0000 Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 00:06:38 +0000 From: Roger Burton West To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Posting style filters? Message-ID: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> Mail-Followup-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline X-Phase-Of-Moon: The Moon is Waning Crescent (49% of Full) X-Discordian-Date: Pungenday, The Aftermath 36 3171 User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i X-Archive-Number: 200511/1 X-Sequence-Number: 1858 I have heard rumours of filters for mailing lists that can bounce postings based on excessive quoting and/or top-posting. Can anyone point me to freeware implementations of these? (I can probably write my own, but other people have access to more badly-written email than I do...) Roger From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Nov 23 16:40:47 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from smtp809.mail.ukl.yahoo.com (smtp809.mail.ukl.yahoo.com [217.12.12.199]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id C814A32C212 for ; Wed, 23 Nov 2005 16:40:46 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 69390 invoked from network); 24 Nov 2005 00:40:45 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?81.151.219.24?) (davislee@81.151.219.24 with plain) by smtp809.mail.ukl.yahoo.com with SMTP; 24 Nov 2005 00:40:45 -0000 Message-ID: <43850C13.90305@btinternet.com> Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 00:40:51 +0000 From: lee User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Posting style filters? References: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> In-Reply-To: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200511/2 X-Sequence-Number: 1859 Hello Roger, I don't know of such software; However do you really feel that top-posting is a technique which is bad enough to warrant being bounced? Or indeed 'too much' quoting? I wouldn't have such views on the mail lists I admin, because I believe such things are the personal choice of the poster with pros and cons from both sides. If one or more readers don't personally like an email to be structured in such a way, and actively object to it, I would feel they are petty and more interested in finding fault rather than considering what is actually being written. lee Roger Burton West wrote: >I have heard rumours of filters for mailing lists that can bounce >postings based on excessive quoting and/or top-posting. Can anyone point >me to freeware implementations of these? (I can probably write my own, >but other people have access to more badly-written email than I do...) > >Roger > -- A perfect internet companion: LEE'S FREE MUSIC STATION Example recent playlist HERE From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Nov 23 16:47:59 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from galatea.hmdnsgroup.com (galatea.hmdnsgroup.com [63.247.134.60]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 77EFC32C501 for ; Wed, 23 Nov 2005 16:47:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from dsl081-078-178.sfo1.dsl.speakeasy.net ([64.81.78.178]:43356 helo=[10.0.1.5]) by galatea.hmdnsgroup.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:RC4-SHA:128) (Exim 4.52) id 1Ef5HL-0006rE-IM; Wed, 23 Nov 2005 19:47:59 -0500 In-Reply-To: <43850C13.90305@btinternet.com> References: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> <43850C13.90305@btinternet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v746.2) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: <20BB9502-AF30-4CE5-B81F-018452F8B99F@plaidworks.com> Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Posting style filters? Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 16:47:48 -0800 To: lee X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.746.2) X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - galatea.hmdnsgroup.com X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - greatcircle.com X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [47 12] / [47 12] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - plaidworks.com X-Source: X-Source-Args: X-Source-Dir: X-Archive-Number: 200511/3 X-Sequence-Number: 1860 where I've seen this stuff used, or where I've experimented iwth it, it's been an absolute failure. it doesn't "teach" users "better" habits, it teaches users how to circumvent the filters. On Nov 23, 2005, at 4:40 PM, lee wrote: > However do you really feel that top-posting is a technique which is > bad enough to warrant being bounced? > Or indeed 'too much' quoting? From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Nov 23 17:02:16 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from ns.lofcom.com (unknown [69.93.98.146]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1F4FC32C505 for ; Wed, 23 Nov 2005 17:02:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from [192.168.123.10] (pool-71-114-136-34.hrbgpa.dsl-w.verizon.net [71.114.136.34]) by ns.lofcom.com (8.12.11/8.12.8) with ESMTP id jAO12EJm019120; Wed, 23 Nov 2005 20:02:15 -0500 X-Envelope-From: charlie@lofcom.com X-Sender: adminmail2@oldradio.net Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <43850C13.90305@btinternet.com> References: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-No-Archive: yes Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 20:01:01 -0500 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Charlie Summers Subject: Re: Posting style filters? X-Archive-Number: 200511/4 X-Sequence-Number: 1861 At 7:40 PM -0500 11/23/05, lee typed: > However do you really feel that top-posting is a technique which is bad > enough to warrant being bounced? Absolutely. Top-posting never did make a lick of sense. It encourages quoting entire messages (including signatures, footers, etc., etc.) and _discourages_ quoting for context only. > Or indeed 'too much' quoting? Lord yes. Over-quoting is the bane of modern maling lists; lok at your message,. We all just read Roger's mail, yet you (or more accurately, your email client) somehow thought it a good idea to repeat it in its entirety to the entire list. Again, makes no sense, and wastes bandwidth. In this reply, I _only_ quote what is relevant to my responses, and no more. The "Q/A" format is easier to comprehend, and indeed was THE standard until Microsloth decided with the release of Outlook Express many moons ago to encourage sloppiness. (I have often wondered if this was just another example of an intentional change to convention to show everyone who was boss...) > If one or more readers don't personally like an email to be structured > in such a way, and actively object to it, I would feel they are petty You'd really hate my lists as a poster, since the _maintainer_ objects to such nonsense and enforces good netiquette. Of course, the vast majority of subscribers who are readers and _not_ posters appreciate it, since the s/n ratio and comprehendibility is much higher than seeing forwards of signatures of forwards of footers of... To answer the original question, I know there are a bunch of recipies for SmartList (the mailing list manager built on top of procmail) floating around to do things like this, but I haven't seen anything for the so-called "modern" (read: web-configured because people no longer know how to use special header fields) systems. Charlie (who's got a cold and is cranky) From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Nov 23 18:26:25 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from smtp810.mail.ukl.yahoo.com (smtp810.mail.ukl.yahoo.com [217.12.12.200]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 74EE232C525 for ; Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:26:24 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 18337 invoked from network); 24 Nov 2005 02:26:23 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?81.151.219.24?) (davislee@81.151.219.24 with plain) by smtp810.mail.ukl.yahoo.com with SMTP; 24 Nov 2005 02:26:22 -0000 Message-ID: <438524D6.10500@btinternet.com> Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 02:26:30 +0000 From: lee User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Posting style filters? References: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200511/5 X-Sequence-Number: 1862 hello Charlie, I appreciate this is doing nothing to help Roger with his query, by the way ... I agree and understand, however I personally still feel that the composition technique, as long as it is legible, isn't a significant issue. Just for the sake of interest, I choose to top-post and include all or part of the previous email, for these reasons : 1) I feel it is more appropriate to present the reader straight away with the 'new' content which I am offering in my reply. 2) If the reader feels any interest in putting my reply into context, they can scroll down and see what I am replying to. I do however not use top-posting if I am replying to various different parts of an email, in which case I would use the 'quoting and replying beneath' technique. Dare I say it, in those scenarios, I also consider using html and a slightly different text colour to contrast more clearly with the quoted original. It's fair to say I'm not a purist ! ;-) I am however very interested in making my mail lists as 'neat' as possible, and I process all plain text mails via Demime pretty much only to use its 'advertising signature removal' to strip out any pre-existing list footers. (which are always the same) I allow html mails and do not Demime them at all, so as not to remove the author's intended formating. It's fair to say I'm not a purist ! ;-) Just my perspective, Lee Charlie Summers wrote: >At 7:40 PM -0500 11/23/05, lee typed: > > > >>However do you really feel that top-posting is a technique which is bad >>enough to warrant being bounced? >> >> > > Absolutely. Top-posting never did make a lick of sense. It encourages >quoting entire messages (including signatures, footers, etc., etc.) and >_discourages_ quoting for context only. > > > >>Or indeed 'too much' quoting? >> >> > > Lord yes. Over-quoting is the bane of modern maling lists; lok at your >message,. We all just read Roger's mail, yet you (or more accurately, your >email client) somehow thought it a good idea to repeat it in its entirety to >the entire list. > > Again, makes no sense, and wastes bandwidth. In this reply, I _only_ quote >what is relevant to my responses, and no more. The "Q/A" format is easier to >comprehend, and indeed was THE standard until Microsloth decided with the >release of Outlook Express many moons ago to encourage sloppiness. (I have >often wondered if this was just another example of an intentional change to >convention to show everyone who was boss...) > > > >>If one or more readers don't personally like an email to be structured >>in such a way, and actively object to it, I would feel they are petty >> >> > > You'd really hate my lists as a poster, since the _maintainer_ objects to >such nonsense and enforces good netiquette. Of course, the vast majority of >subscribers who are readers and _not_ posters appreciate it, since the s/n >ratio and comprehendibility is much higher than seeing forwards of signatures >of forwards of footers of... > - A perfect internet companion: LEE'S FREE MUSIC STATION Example recent playlist HERE From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Nov 23 22:30:14 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from mail.vjs.org (achilles.vjs.org [209.163.107.227]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2356132C1E1 for ; Wed, 23 Nov 2005 22:30:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from [192.168.0.4] (209.163.107.229) by mail.vjs.org with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 3.1.5) for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 01:30:16 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20BB9502-AF30-4CE5-B81F-018452F8B99F@plaidworks.com> References: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> <43850C13.90305@btinternet.com> <20BB9502-AF30-4CE5-B81F-018452F8B99F@plaidworks.com> X-Mailer: Eudora 8.0b19 for Cray SV-2 (beta release), unregistered Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 01:29:41 -0500 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Vince Sabio Subject: Re: Posting style filters? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Archive-Number: 200511/6 X-Sequence-Number: 1863 ** Sometime around 16:47 -0800 11/23/2005, Chuq Von Rospach said: >where I've seen this stuff used, or where I've experimented iwth it, >it's been an absolute failure. it doesn't "teach" users "better" >habits, it teaches users how to circumvent the filters. Disagree with you (for a change), Chuq. On our lists, the server bounces messages for over-quoting, and the Listmoms(tm) bounce messages (on specific mailing lists) for top posting. In neither case do users, as a practice, circumvent the filters (there are exceptions, but we have an active Listmom(tm) team, so the exceptions are singletons FTMP, and are rare in any event). However (and this is a big 'however' for Roger), what we've observed is that some users get kinda pissy when their posts are rejected for top posting. Of the ones who get pissy, some will attempt to debate with the Listmoms the relative merits of top posting vs. threaded posting (as we call it), and most of them will simply refuse to reformat their message and re-post it. [1] ** Sometime around 00:40 +0000 11/24/2005, lee said: >I wouldn't have such views on the mail lists I admin, because I >believe such things are the personal choice of the poster with pros >and cons from both sides. We have very pragmatic ration^W justifications for banning top posting in favor of threaded posting: 1. The vast majority of cases in which the poster has quoted an entire message are top-posted replies. To put a number on it, it's probably in excess of 90%. In any event, it's very highly correlated -- and it's very lazy. 2. Top posting yields a poorly formatted daily digest. This is partly due to excessive quoting, and partly because the interspersing of top-posted messages and threaded-style messages makes it damned near impossible to decipher. [2] So it's not merely a matter of personal choice IMNSHO, as the "personal choice" affects the readability of the list as well as the readability of the daily digest. [3] IOW, it affects every other subscriber on the list. In the end, whether a list owner imposes (or attempts to impose) a specific posting format and/or set of posting guidelines on a list is, IMO, largely a function of the nature and character of the list. For that reason, we have imposed a threaded posting requirement on some of our lists, but not all of them. No matter what you do, you might as well assume that some people will not be happy with it. And that includes the do-nothing option (i.e., no list policy, leave it up to the individual poster), as well. Say, anyone want to talk about Reply-To munging? __________________________________________________________________________ Vince Sabio vince@vjs.org [1] It is worth noting that there are some subscribers who like the threaded posting requirement enough to request that we extend it to other lists that we host. In all fairness, there are far fewer voices of praise on this point than there are voices of criticism -- but then, that's human nature, so it's to be expected. [2] It can be argued that the interspersing problem is as much the fault of threaded posting as top posting -- and I'd say you're right, but I'd also remind you that over-quoting is still correlated with top posting -- so if we had to pick one format and stick with it, we'd pick threaded posting. And, in fact, that's exactly what we did. [3] Sure, there's a MIME digest option. But I'm not going to tell the subscribers that they must subscribe to the MIME digest in order to get a readable digest in their mailbox each day. It is also worth noting that about 75% of our digest subscribers receive the plain-text version, not the MIME version. In some cases, it is out of ignorance, but there are cases in which we recommend the MIME digest to a subscriber (for one reason or another), and have had the subscriber state a preference for the plain-text digest. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Wed Nov 23 22:56:56 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from galatea.hmdnsgroup.com (galatea.hmdnsgroup.com [63.247.134.60]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id DB19F32C552 for ; Wed, 23 Nov 2005 22:56:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from dsl081-078-178.sfo1.dsl.speakeasy.net ([64.81.78.178]:39297 helo=[10.0.1.5]) by galatea.hmdnsgroup.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:RC4-SHA:128) (Exim 4.52) id 1EfB2Q-00050E-Is; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 01:56:59 -0500 In-Reply-To: References: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> <43850C13.90305@btinternet.com> <20BB9502-AF30-4CE5-B81F-018452F8B99F@plaidworks.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v746.2) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: <8BB732D2-4FB5-4C72-BC11-C94423D39AD2@plaidworks.com> Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Posting style filters? Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 22:56:51 -0800 To: Vince Sabio X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.746.2) X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - galatea.hmdnsgroup.com X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - greatcircle.com X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [47 12] / [47 12] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - plaidworks.com X-Source: X-Source-Args: X-Source-Dir: X-Archive-Number: 200511/7 X-Sequence-Number: 1864 funny, I generally top post now. I guess that makes me a heathen or something. At work, we do that because it keeps the context of the discussion together, but out of the way. It saves us rooting around for something that was said three messages ago. Occasionally I'll tear down a message and respond point by point, but usually, that's overkill. First, top post vs. inline is a religious fight. Nobody is "right" -- different people have different preferences. To assume there can be only one style is like telling everyone to use san-serif fonts. It's not about what's best, but enforcing on everyone what SOME people want. My argument has been, and continues to be, that people should spend their time teaching their mail clients to present mail in the format they prefer, adn not yelling at others to "do it this way", because there will always be idiots like me who refuse to change my habits to fit your preferences. Because I don't believe anhyone has the right to declare themselves god and enforce their preferences on others. it's a losing game from the start, so why bother? focus on things you CAN control, which is your own environment. Quit trying to stuff your envirobnment out on the commons. That's why some users get "pissy" when the list moms do this, by the way, and I can't blame them. they're RIGHT. Same with "reply to", and "don't email me AND the list", and any of a dozen other "you have to do it my way, because I said so" things. But frankly, I think it no longer matters; the mail list as a primary communications community tool is dead. Which is a great way to start another argument, but I won't bother getting into it. I'll just note this posting: http://chuqui.typepad.com/teal_sunglasses/2005/11/ the_past_slippi.html and shut up again. By the way, what RFC states that top posting is the wrong way to do this? I don't remember seeing that standard. Oh, and this is a losing cause at best, given that most email clients today handle replies in a way to encourage top posting. You might as well fight the fight against porn on USENET. ACtually, that's probably easier. On Nov 23, 2005, at 10:29 PM, Vince Sabio wrote: > ** Sometime around 16:47 -0800 11/23/2005, Chuq Von Rospach said: > >> where I've seen this stuff used, or where I've experimented iwth >> it, it's been an absolute failure. it doesn't "teach" users >> "better" habits, it teaches users how to circumvent the filters. > > Disagree with you (for a change), Chuq. On our lists, the server > bounces messages for over-quoting, and the Listmoms(tm) bounce > messages (on specific mailing lists) for top posting. In neither > case do users, as a practice, circumvent the filters (there are > exceptions, but we have an active Listmom(tm) team, so the > exceptions are singletons FTMP, and are rare in any event). > > However (and this is a big 'however' for Roger), what we've > observed is that some users get kinda pissy when their posts are > rejected for top posting. Of the ones who get pissy, some will > attempt to debate with the Listmoms the relative merits of top > posting vs. threaded posting (as we call it), and most of them will > simply refuse to reformat their message and re-post it. [1] > > ** Sometime around 00:40 +0000 11/24/2005, lee said: > >> I wouldn't have such views on the mail lists I admin, because I >> believe such things are the personal choice of the poster with >> pros and cons from both sides. > > We have very pragmatic ration^W justifications for banning top > posting in favor of threaded posting: > > 1. The vast majority of cases in which the poster has quoted an > entire message are top-posted replies. To put a number on it, it's > probably in excess of 90%. In any event, it's very highly > correlated -- and it's very lazy. > > 2. Top posting yields a poorly formatted daily digest. This is > partly due to excessive quoting, and partly because the > interspersing of top-posted messages and threaded-style messages > makes it damned near impossible to decipher. [2] > > So it's not merely a matter of personal choice IMNSHO, as the > "personal choice" affects the readability of the list as well as > the readability of the daily digest. [3] IOW, it affects every > other subscriber on the list. > > In the end, whether a list owner imposes (or attempts to impose) a > specific posting format and/or set of posting guidelines on a list > is, IMO, largely a function of the nature and character of the > list. For that reason, we have imposed a threaded posting > requirement on some of our lists, but not all of them. No matter > what you do, you might as well assume that some people will not be > happy with it. And that includes the do-nothing option (i.e., no > list policy, leave it up to the individual poster), as well. > > Say, anyone want to talk about Reply-To munging? > > ______________________________________________________________________ > ____ > Vince Sabio > vince@vjs.org > > [1] It is worth noting that there are some subscribers who like the > threaded posting requirement enough to request that we extend it to > other lists that we host. In all fairness, there are far fewer > voices of praise on this point than there are voices of criticism > -- but then, that's human nature, so it's to be expected. > > [2] It can be argued that the interspersing problem is as much the > fault of threaded posting as top posting -- and I'd say you're > right, but I'd also remind you that over-quoting is still > correlated with top posting -- so if we had to pick one format and > stick with it, we'd pick threaded posting. And, in fact, that's > exactly what we did. > > [3] Sure, there's a MIME digest option. But I'm not going to tell > the subscribers that they must subscribe to the MIME digest in > order to get a readable digest in their mailbox each day. It is > also worth noting that about 75% of our digest subscribers receive > the plain-text version, not the MIME version. In some cases, it is > out of ignorance, but there are cases in which we recommend the > MIME digest to a subscriber (for one reason or another), and have > had the subscriber state a preference for the plain-text digest. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Nov 24 05:27:44 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from mail.gva.net (mail.gva.net [72.236.215.4]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D1FDC32C580 for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 05:18:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from FarmLaptop ([72.236.215.51]) by mail.gva.net (VisNetic.MailServer.v7.6.1.0) with ASMTP id JCD37962 for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 08:30:01 -0500 From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 08:29:58 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: Posting style filters? Message-ID: <43857A06.23736.824CCD6@localhost> In-reply-to: <8BB732D2-4FB5-4C72-BC11-C94423D39AD2@plaidworks.com> References: X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (4.21c) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body X-Archive-Number: 200511/8 X-Sequence-Number: 1865 On 23 Nov 2005 at 22:56, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > But frankly, I think it no longer matters; the mail list as a primary > communications community tool is dead. Which is a great way to start > another argument, but I won't bother getting into it. I'll just note > this posting: http://chuqui.typepad.com/teal_sunglasses/2005/11/ > the_past_slippi.html and shut up again. What's unfortunate is that the web-based forums are *SO* bad as to be nearly useless [especially compared with email- or usenet-based ones]. > By the way, what RFC states that top posting is the wrong way to do > this? I don't remember seeing that standard. Probably 1855, "Netiquette": >> - If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you >> summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just >> enough text of the original to give a context. This will make sure >> readers understand when they start to read your response. Since >> .... Giving context helps everyone. >> But do not include the entire original! ---------------------- Perhaps I'm just too old, or getting too senile, but I find top-posted replies very difficult to sort out: the poster seems to believe that both the particular message in the thread, and the actual parts of that message, to which they're responding is somehow obvious [or transmitted psychically or some such]. And so a post that just begins "I agree" (with what?) or "you're wrong..." [*who* is wrong? And about what??]... etc.. just befuddle and irritate me. [and it is even better when a top- posted "on digest" person replies: you get a top-posted reply to a message 15 back in the thread and REALLY have to guess what's going on; but then digests are pretty much useless [and should've died a natural death 20 yrs ago], but that's a different debate..:o); or similarly if someone is away and a week or so much later replies to one [which one??] MUCH earlier message in the thread] Altogether, I don't know how folk who handle a lot of email [as I know Chuq does] stay sane sorting things out that have been top-posted. The very best I can say about top-posting is: 1) if you're too lazy to edit down the context, then you probably ARE better off top posting 2) *some* of the time I'm following a thread closely enough, AND it is linear enough, that a top-posted reply doesn't leave me with a "huh?". And since I'm competent with my email client, I don't need to have 25 old messages in a thread forwarded to me as some sort of useless appendix -- if the reply includes reasonable context, I won't need it at all, and if I do need the entirety of one of the antecedent messages, I'll find it in an appropriate folder or have my mail client thread to it for me. I certainly don't need 24 copies of the first message in the thread [on each of the subsequent 24 followups], and 23 copies of the second message in the thread, ..etc.. (and a partridge in a pear tree..:o)]. Oh well, another religious war that'll never get settled down. And Chuq is probably right: since top-posting is the easiest path for the lazy/inconsiderate authors -- read and type, what could be easier -- it probably will end up being the de facto standard and we edit-down-bottom- posters will just be viewed as relics of the past... sigh... /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Nov 24 06:07:44 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from smtp805.mail.ukl.yahoo.com (smtp805.mail.ukl.yahoo.com [217.12.12.195]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 10FF832C2E4 for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 06:07:11 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 75403 invoked from network); 24 Nov 2005 14:20:50 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?86.137.17.211?) (davislee@86.137.17.211 with plain) by smtp805.mail.ukl.yahoo.com with SMTP; 24 Nov 2005 14:20:50 -0000 Message-ID: <4385CC49.1020303@btinternet.com> Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 14:20:57 +0000 From: lee User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Posting style filters? References: <43857A06.23736.824CCD6@localhost> In-Reply-To: <43857A06.23736.824CCD6@localhost> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200511/9 X-Sequence-Number: 1866 Please see below for 'in context' reply ;-) Bernie Cosell wrote: >On 23 Nov 2005 at 22:56, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > > > >>But frankly, I think it no longer matters; the mail list as a primary >>communications community tool is dead. Which is a great way to start >>another argument, but I won't bother getting into it. I'll just note >>this posting: http://chuqui.typepad.com/teal_sunglasses/2005/11/ >>the_past_slippi.html and shut up again. >> >> > >What's unfortunate is that the web-based forums are *SO* bad as to be >nearly useless [especially compared with email- or usenet-based ones]. > > hmm I disagree. I use phpBB with Mail2Forum integrated, and I am quite pleased with the results. I have also added other mods to phpBB, however, to bring its 'default' performance up to what I consider necessary. lee -- A perfect internet companion: LEE'S FREE MUSIC STATION Example recent playlist HERE From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Nov 24 08:12:37 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from mail.gva.net (mail.gva.net [72.236.215.4]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C037132C597 for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 08:12:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from FarmLaptop ([72.236.215.51]) by mail.gva.net (VisNetic.MailServer.v7.6.1.0) with ASMTP id JCD37962 for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 11:12:33 -0500 From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 11:12:30 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: Posting style filters? Message-ID: <4385A01E.15388.8B99CC0@localhost> In-reply-to: <4385CC49.1020303@btinternet.com> References: <43857A06.23736.824CCD6@localhost> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (4.21c) Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-description: Mail message body X-Archive-Number: 200511/10 X-Sequence-Number: 1867 On 24 Nov 2005 at 14:20, lee wrote: > Bernie Cosell wrote: > > >What's unfortunate is that the web-based forums are *SO* bad as to be > >nearly useless [especially compared with email- or usenet-based ones]. > > > > > hmm I disagree. I use phpBB with Mail2Forum integrated, and I am quite > pleased with the results. > I have also added other mods to phpBB, however, to bring its 'default' > performance up to what I consider necessary. I've used several phpBB-based forums and mostly don't like them: no two use the same interface quite [e.g., for two forums that have very similar topics, one has "next thread" go backward in time, and on the other it goes forward; in my email client *I* can choose whether things are in chron or reverse-chron order]. It doesn't keep track of what I've seen and what I haven't (other than in a VERY broad-brush, easily screwed up way that's basically useless); when it tells me that a thread has a 'new' post, that's it: I need to shuffle through the whole thread to figure out how far I'd read it last time and then continue on. It is SLOW. Even on our T3 at work [don't even ASK about my 28.8 dialup at home] the click- wait-click-wait is a PITA compared with having things ready at hand in my email client. No kill files, no way to highlight threads I'm interested in, no way to save copies of interesting messages, No way to tailor the interface to my preferences, etc.... And it is 'pull' instead of push -- and so in order to keep abreast of the 35 programs for which the 'support' has moved from a mailing list to a web forum, I need to remember to cycle through all 35 websites [with the usual very-poor keeping track of what you've already seen, inability to kill/ignore threads you're not interested in, each one uses a different interface [NONE tailorable to my preferences], 35 more account- names and passwords to keep track of, etc]. Altoghether, I really can't find anything particularly good about web- based forums versus the comfort, ease and efficiency of using my email client. About the only thing I've heard positive about web-forums is from folk not very proficient with email, and their comments basically reduce to 'well, it's better than reading email with outlook express". /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Nov 24 16:41:30 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from ultra7.eskimo.com (ultra7.eskimo.com [204.122.16.70]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4847132C627 for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 16:41:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from big-dog.dogswood.com (dialport125.west.eskimo.net [67.136.147.165]) by ultra7.eskimo.com (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id jAP0fGc4027577 for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 16:41:17 -0800 Received: (from jimo@localhost) by big-dog.dogswood.com (8.11.6/8.11.6/SuSE Linux 0.5) id jAP0Z8U17183 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 16:35:08 -0800 Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 16:35:08 -0800 From: Jim Osborn To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Posting style filters? Message-ID: <20051125003508.GA7848@eskimo.com> References: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i X-Archive-Number: 200511/11 X-Sequence-Number: 1868 On Thu, Nov 24, 2005 at 12:06:38AM +0000, Roger Burton West wrote: > I have heard rumours of filters for mailing lists that can bounce > postings based on excessive quoting and/or top-posting. Can anyone > point me to freeware implementations of these? I thought I'd wait and see what sort of recommendations came forth, not having heard those rumors myself; all the "filters" I know of are manual, on fully-moderated lists, where the listmoms do the bouncing. I'm too lazy to monitor my lists that closely, and some of my more valued members are those who just can not be trained to use good etiquette. Maybe they're in too much of a hurry to edit all the crap their Microsoft mailer puts at the bottom of their reply, but we're grateful nonetheless for the info in that reply. Given that state of affairs, I chose to roll my own procmail-based filters, not to bounce submissions but to clean up the distributions, and I apply those filters just to my digest. Without the filtering, many of my digests would consist of a single article, saying "I agree!!!!" on top of a quoted^10 thread. Writing the filters wasn't particularly difficult, once I decided on the requirements (typical software, huh). I watch for ratios of quoted to unquoted text and the "nesting level" of the quotation, and try to keep the immediately-prior article if the poster has added enough new material. It turned out to be much easier to filter top-posted articles, which was good, given that those are much more likely to contain thoughtless quotation. Of course, there are some pathological cases where the filters decide it's just too hard, and they send the thing to the maintainer (that's me) for help, but that only seems to happen to one out of a thousand articles, so I can live with it. > (I can probably write my own, but other people have access to more > badly-written email than I do...) If you decide to roll your own, you'll probably want to tailer them to the quoting personality of your lists; I'm sure mine reflect the styles of my list's members. I'll admit there was a "training" period during which some follow-on development took place, adding a new class of pathological quotation, etc. If your lists are procmail based, I could share my meager efforts, for what they're worth. Cheers, Jim From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Nov 24 19:50:32 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from smtp813.mail.ukl.yahoo.com (smtp813.mail.ukl.yahoo.com [217.12.12.203]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id E988332C20E for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 19:49:52 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 40355 invoked from network); 25 Nov 2005 03:49:51 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?81.151.218.64?) (davislee@81.151.218.64 with plain) by smtp813.mail.ukl.yahoo.com with SMTP; 25 Nov 2005 03:49:51 -0000 Message-ID: <438689E9.8040908@btinternet.com> Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 03:50:01 +0000 From: lee User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Posting style filters? References: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> <20051125003508.GA7848@eskimo.com> In-Reply-To: <20051125003508.GA7848@eskimo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200511/12 X-Sequence-Number: 1869 Sounds like a rather clever system you have going on there, Jim. I certainly agree that digests become a pretty bad mess, due to the replying and quoting issues we've been discussing. I suppose I've taken a 'well, can't do much about that' attitude, and just accept that digests will contain fiendish amounts of repetition. By the way, does anyone use a MLM which 'threads' in a digest? ie sequencing by virtue of subject title. This would make following a thread easier but of course still excessively cluttered. I'm assuming 'digest threading' isn't generally performed by mlm's, or maybe just the ones I've used don't do it ... ? Jim Osborn wrote: > I chose to roll my own procmail-based filters, not to bounce > submissions but to clean up the distributions, and I apply those > filters just to my digest. Jim, how do you apply the filters to only the digest? Just curious, as I'm assuming you wouldn't have a separate pipe in place to feed just the digester processing ... presumably you've hacked your mlm and integrated your filters into its digest processing? thanks, lee -- A perfect internet companion: LEE'S FREE MUSIC STATION Example recent playlist HERE From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Nov 24 20:53:39 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from mail2.panix.com (mail2.panix.com [166.84.1.73]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9908532C384 for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 20:53:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from mailspool2.panix.com (mailspool2.panix.com [166.84.1.79]) by mail2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 862A89DC45 for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 23:53:33 -0500 (EST) Received: from [71.194.195.210] (unknown [71.194.195.210]) by mailspool2.panix.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 20876FB1101 for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 23:53:34 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <438698C8.8010004@panix.com> Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 22:53:28 -0600 From: "David W. Tamkin" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Posting style filters? References: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> <20051125003508.GA7848@eskimo.com> <438689E9.8040908@btinternet.com> In-Reply-To: <438689E9.8040908@btinternet.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200511/13 X-Sequence-Number: 1870 Lee, > By the way, does anyone use a MLM which 'threads' in a digest? ie > sequencing by virtue of subject title. This would make following a > thread easier but of course still excessively cluttered. I used to be one ... not use one, be one. It was 1990-1991, and I'd cut digest issues manually when enough posts had accumulated or enough time had passed. And that literally involved cutting manually: I'd print out the digest queue, chop up the printout into individual messages with scissors, arrange them (in nice weather, sometimes outdoors on a picnic table) by threads, mark their position numbers with a pen, return to the computer, resequence the queued messages in my chosen procession, and feed the resulting mbox to my digestification script. From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Nov 24 22:01:15 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from ultra7.eskimo.com (ultra7.eskimo.com [204.122.16.70]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A97E232C605 for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 22:01:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from big-dog.dogswood.com (dialport155.west.eskimo.net [67.136.147.195]) by ultra7.eskimo.com (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id jAP615Cu010435 for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 22:01:06 -0800 Received: (from jimo@localhost) by big-dog.dogswood.com (8.11.6/8.11.6/SuSE Linux 0.5) id jAP5tnj20588 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 21:55:49 -0800 Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 21:55:49 -0800 From: Jim Osborn To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Posting style filters? Message-ID: <20051125055549.GB7848@eskimo.com> Mail-Followup-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com References: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> <20051125003508.GA7848@eskimo.com> <438689E9.8040908@btinternet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <438689E9.8040908@btinternet.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i X-Archive-Number: 200511/14 X-Sequence-Number: 1871 On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 3:50:01AM +0000, lee wrote: > By the way, does anyone use a MLM which 'threads' in a digest? ie > sequencing by virtue of subject title. This would make following a > thread easier but of course still excessively cluttered. Um, threading, as I understand it, is accomplished by the sequence of replies that form the "thread." As email messages are uniquely identified by the Message-ID: header field, the sequence of the MIDs that comprise the thread is used by one's email client to display the thread (including any sub-threads). Well-behaved email clients, when replying, will use the MID of the mail being replied to to make an In-Reply-To: header, and will add that MID to the running list of prior MIDs kept in the References: header. The In-Reply-To: and References: headers give the client all the info it needs to display threads properly. The Subject fields can be used if all else is missing, but since the Subject often changes in the course of a thread, it's a poor field to rely on. I think the RFC that deals with this is 2822. Obviously, some email clients are not as well behaved as others. > I'm assuming 'digest threading' isn't generally performed by mlm's, or > maybe just the ones I've used don't do it ... ? The MLM I use, Smartlist, preserves the MIDs, but not the In-Reply-To or References headers on the digest articles, which is too bad. If they were preserved, at least the info would be there for a clever client. > Jim Osborn wrote: > > I chose to roll my own procmail-based filters, not to bounce > > submissions but to clean up the distributions, and I apply those > > filters just to my digest. > > Jim, how do you apply the filters to only the digest? Nothing to it; I simply add the appropriate procmail recipes to my list's digest rc.local.s10 file. > Just curious, as I'm assuming you wouldn't have a separate pipe in > place to feed just the digester processing ... presumably you've > hacked your mlm and integrated your filters into its digest > processing? No hacking at all by me, just a stock Smartlist setup. Cheers, Jim From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Thu Nov 24 23:01:13 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from ultra7.eskimo.com (ultra7.eskimo.com [204.122.16.70]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8853C32C17A for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 23:01:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from big-dog.dogswood.com (dialport152.west.eskimo.net [67.136.147.192]) by ultra7.eskimo.com (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id jAP713QJ013404 for ; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 23:01:04 -0800 Received: (from jimo@localhost) by big-dog.dogswood.com (8.11.6/8.11.6/SuSE Linux 0.5) id jAP6j1r21004 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 24 Nov 2005 22:45:01 -0800 Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 22:45:01 -0800 From: Jim Osborn To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Posting style filters? Message-ID: <20051125064501.GC7848@eskimo.com> Mail-Followup-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com References: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> <43850C13.90305@btinternet.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <43850C13.90305@btinternet.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i X-Archive-Number: 200511/15 X-Sequence-Number: 1872 On Thu, Nov 24, 2005 at 12:40:51AM +0000, lee wrote: > I don't know of such software; However do you really feel that > top-posting is a technique which is bad enough to warrant being > bounced? Or indeed 'too much' quoting? Many of the lists of which I am a member do enforce such policies. It seems the more the lists are targeted at "professional" membership the more the maintainers keep tight hands on the reins. My wife subscribes to a botanical list that fully moderates new members. Once you've demonstrated that you can follow the list's etiquette rules, you're granted un-moderated status, which must help take the load off the maintainer. > I wouldn't have such views on the mail lists I admin, because I > believe such things are the personal choice of the poster with pros > and cons from both sides. That's a choice you're free to make as a list manager. One of the virtues of the mailing list is the freedom to be as democratic or autocratic as the maintainer desires (assuming corporate decision makers aren't setting policies). > If one or more readers don't personally like an email to be > structured in such a way, and actively object to it, I would feel > they are petty and more interested in finding fault rather than > considering what is actually being written. I think some of the more autocratic formats arise from a desire to increase the signal-to-noise ratio in an environment where noise can easily get out of hand. It's hard enough to keep up with just the signals on lists that deal with serious information. One of my favorite lists deals with aggressive dogs. That listmom specifies the format of the Subject line, the line length of the body, and has guidelines for sentence structure and grammar, as well as the customary rules regarding excess quotation, plain-text-only, etc. There's also a booklist you're expected to have read before you post at all. If you make your living helping people manage difficult dogs, I guess you don't stand for any breaking of the rules on the list you run. Sit. Stay. Write. :) The signal-to-noise ratio there is very high indeed. As Chuq said, this stuff is religious, and minds aren't often changed by debating the subject. Cheers, Jim From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Fri Nov 25 04:58:54 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from smtp801.mail.ukl.yahoo.com (smtp801.mail.ukl.yahoo.com [217.12.12.138]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with SMTP id CE0C932C456 for ; Fri, 25 Nov 2005 04:56:06 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 88708 invoked from network); 25 Nov 2005 13:04:56 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?86.134.129.2?) (davislee@86.134.129.2 with plain) by smtp801.mail.ukl.yahoo.com with SMTP; 25 Nov 2005 13:04:56 -0000 Message-ID: <43870C02.1040300@btinternet.com> Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 13:05:06 +0000 From: lee User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Posting style filters? References: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> <43850C13.90305@btinternet.com> <20051125064501.GC7848@eskimo.com> In-Reply-To: <20051125064501.GC7848@eskimo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 200511/16 X-Sequence-Number: 1873 All interesting stuff, Jim. I think my admin experience has probably given me the mindset that requesting (although often considering !) certain etiquette is a waste of time and impractical; this is probably largely because my area of experience is with lists/forums where the participants have mild through to severe personal and emotional problems. ie, the last thing I want to enforce or could achieve, is demand tough rules on how to post. I do however have a fairly strict Conduct and Discipline Structure, offered by me and agreed by concensus, regarding what people post about and how they treat each other. I reasonably often have to use it, and seems to be fair and effective without imposing 'my' views specifically. Out of interest, here it is : (url broken here to avoid unwanted search engine indexing) http : // incelsite . com / conduct . shtml lee Jim Osborn wrote: >Many of the lists of which I am a member do enforce such policies. >It seems the more the lists are targeted at "professional" membership >the more the maintainers keep tight hands on the reins... > > >One of my favorite lists deals with aggressive dogs. That listmom >specifies the format of the Subject line, the line length of the >body, and has guidelines for sentence structure and grammar, as well >as the customary rules regarding excess quotation, plain-text-only, >etc. There's also a booklist you're expected to have read before you >post at all. If you make your living helping people manage difficult >dogs, I guess you don't stand for any breaking of the rules on the >list you run. Sit. Stay. Write. :) > -- A perfect internet companion: LEE'S FREE MUSIC STATION Example recent playlist HERE From list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Sat Nov 26 11:46:54 2005 X-Original-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Received: from mail.vjs.org (achilles.vjs.org [209.163.107.227]) by mycroft.greatcircle.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id AED3032C3FF for ; Sat, 26 Nov 2005 11:46:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from [192.168.0.4] (209.163.107.229) by mail.vjs.org with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 3.1.5) for ; Sat, 26 Nov 2005 14:46:58 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <8BB732D2-4FB5-4C72-BC11-C94423D39AD2@plaidworks.com> References: <20051124000638.GA23161@firedrake.org> <43850C13.90305@btinternet.com> <20BB9502-AF30-4CE5-B81F-018452F8B99F@plaidworks.com> <8BB732D2-4FB5-4C72-BC11-C94423D39AD2@plaidworks.com> X-Mailer: Eudora 8.0b19 for Cray SV-2 (beta release), unregistered Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 14:31:18 -0500 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Vince Sabio Subject: Re: Posting style filters? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Archive-Number: 200511/17 X-Sequence-Number: 1874 ** Sometime around 22:56 -0800 11/23/2005, Chuq Von Rospach sent everyone: >funny, I generally top post now. I guess that makes me a heathen or something. Chuq, Chuq, Chuq, what has happened to you? I don't remember your being this judgmental. No one has tried (AFAICT) to equate top-posting to heathenism. Last I recall, we were trying to discuss a topic, not trying to ban it from the 'Net. >At work, we do that because it keeps the context of the discussion >together, but out of the way. It saves us rooting around for >something that was said three messages ago. Occasionally I'll tear >down a message and respond point by point, but usually, that's >overkill. And that is exactly how correspondence works in my office, as well -- and I'm sure that it's the norm in most offices these days. And there's nothing wrong with that -- yaknow, "right tool for the right job" and all that. >First, top post vs. inline is a religious fight. It certainly is, which is why I ended my post with "Say, anyone want to talk about Reply-To munging" comment (another religious argument where there is no right or wrong). >Nobody is "right" Yes, Chuq, that is entirely correct. And you might have noticed a distinct lack of any suggestion in my post that either method is "right" or "wrong." (Or if there was such an inference, it was entirely unintentional.) >-- different people have different preferences. To assume there can >be only one style is like telling everyone to use san-serif fonts. >It's not about what's best, but enforcing on everyone what SOME >people want. Yes, that is correct. And unfortunately, sometimes it is necessary to make decisions like that -- to inconvenience a few for the good of the entire list. Now, don't get me wrong, that is not the same as saying that one method is "right" or the other one is "wrong"; we've simply decided to standardize on a particular format that we feel is better suited for discussion lists. >My argument has been, and continues to be, that people should spend >their time teaching their mail clients to present mail in the format >they prefer, adn not yelling at others to "do it this way", because >there will always be idiots like me who refuse to change my habits >to fit your preferences. Because I don't believe anhyone has the >right to declare themselves god and enforce their preferences on >others. And I agree, and that's one of the truly beautiful things about the Internet : If someone doesn't like that way one list is run, then s/he is free to leave and join any number of other lists. And so the argument to that statement is anticipated to be, "Well, then you are chasing away subscribers." Granted, but the reality is this: (1) We're not in this to see how many subscribers we can get; we're providing a free public service. No one is forced to subscribe, much less post, to our mailing lists. (2) We're going to chase away subscriber no matter WHAT we do. If we standardize on top-posting, we will lose subscribers who don't like that format. If we do not standardize on any format at all, and allow the individual subscribers to choose, then we will lose subscribers who find it difficult to follow threads or read the digests (that was the complaint we were receiving that led to our decision to standardize on a threaded posting format on our Mac-centric lists). >it's a losing game from the start, Actually, it's not -- we've had very good success overall with the threaded-posting standardization. That's not to say that it makes everyone happy, but there's NO list format that will make everyone happy; we simply need to select something that works for the individual list and go with it. On our lists, the vast majority of posts are in the threaded format, which doesn't seem to be a "losing game" AFAWCT. And the fact that we have subscribers asking us to extend the threaded-posting requirement to other lists suggests that it's working pretty well, at least for some. >so why bother? Primarily because the digests were simply becoming untenable -- many threads, even for those in MAIL mode, were confusing to the point of being utterly useless, with top posts interspersed with threaded posts. >focus on things you CAN control, which is your own environment. But they're OUR lists, so they ARE our environment. And your statement seems to imply that it's not controllable, while our experience is directly contrary to that. >Quit trying to stuff your envirobnment out on the commons. The job of a Listmom is to manage the list for the better interests of the group (a socialist perspective on discussion lists -- but then, discussion lists are, IMO, inherently socialist). FWIW, we also kill threads when they drift off the topic of the list, and we stop flame wars dead in their tracks. Sure, we could quit trying to impose our individual wills upon the lists and just let there be a free-for-all out there -- but then what good would the list be? Defining "order" on the list is a line in the sand; our line just happens to be a little farther down the beach from your line, but we're still drawing our lines arbitrarily based on our own experience, on the subscriber base that we have (or imagine that we have), on what our individual goals are for the list, and on the tools that we have at our disposal to help us implement the list's guidelines. >That's why some users get "pissy" when the list moms do this, by the >way, and I can't blame them. they're RIGHT. But Chuq, I thought you said, "Nobody is 'right' -- different people have different preferences." Either way, this is not a "right" and "wrong" type of issue. They have their preferred method of posting; we have a method upon which we've standardized for [what we perceive to be] the good of the list. Those who simply do not want to adjust their posting style to our posting requirements are neither "right" nor "wrong." It is their choice whether they post, and their choice whether they subscribe at all. If I were running a publicly funded service -- e.g., university-funded discussion lists set up by an academic department at a state university for the benefit of the students -- then I'd be more inclined to view this as a question of egalitarian access. But I personally pay for (and maintain) the servers and the bandwidth, and we have an all-volunteer group of Listmoms, and we feel that it is acceptable for us to decide how we want to run the lists, and what format we wish to use, and then let those who like that style of management join the lists and participate. To be sure, there are those who DON'T like our management style -- and some of them are quite vehement about it. I don't fault them for their opinions, nor do I feel that they are wrong simply for not liking our management style -- but I'm also not going to change a format that seems to be working quite well for the majority simply because of a very vocal few. >Same with "reply to", and "don't email me AND the list", and any of >a dozen other "you have to do it my way, because I said so" things. Well, "Reply-To" is simply a decision that has to be made -- there are three choices, and the list manager/owner simply has to select the one that he thinks works best for his list, taking into consideration many of the same factors that were taking into consideration for posting format (subscriber base, type of list, goals of list, etc.). In contrast, the "don't e-mail me and the list" thing is an individual subscriber preference -- and while I believe it's acceptable for posters to keep track of the posting guidelines for an entire list, I don't think it's practical for a poster to have to remember the Cc: preferences of every active poster on the list. I think it's acceptable for the list managers to decide, on behalf of their constituency, what is best for the list, and impose standardization, guidelines, rules, whatever you want to call them. I don't think it's acceptable for individual subscribers to start dictating format, because that's just no scalable. >But frankly, I think it no longer matters; the mail list as a >primary communications community tool is dead. Which is a great way >to start another argument, but I won't bother getting into it. I'll >just note this posting: >http://chuqui.typepad.com/teal_sunglasses/2005/11/the_past_slippi.html >and shut up again. Hmmm, well, I have my own thoughts on that, and I think you might be trying to generalize a bit too much, but I agree that it's all a different argu^W thread entirely. >By the way, what RFC states that top posting is the wrong way to do this? Gee, Chuq, I don't know of any. >I don't remember seeing that standard. Funny thing, neither do I. And I should hope that one never materializes, either, as I think it would be quite detrimental, no matter what format the RFC decided to espouse/endorse. >Oh, and this is a losing cause at best, given that most email >clients today handle replies in a way to encourage top posting. You >might as well fight the fight against porn on USENET. ACtually, >that's probably easier. Well, as I said, it seems to be working pretty well for us -- with the caveat that, no matter WHAT choice we make (including the "no choice" option), we're going to make some group of people unhappy. Including, apparently, other list owners. ;-) __________________________________________________________________________ Vince Sabio vince@vjs.org