[Babase] List netiquette

Karl O. Pinc babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Tue, 19 Apr 2005 22:32:37 +0000


On 04/19/2005 04:02:17 PM, Susan Alberts wrote:

> What I've understood so far about rules is:
> 
> 1. do NOT include all of the original message when you are replying  
> to something, edit out the bits you are not replying to, and
> 2. nest your replies within the text that you are replying to.
> 3. Make sure your email program is set to send plain text.

That's basically it. The "top-posting considered harmful"
link below summarizes it with something like "you can't
assume that everybody has read everything that's gone before
and you can't ask the reader to search through it all either
to find the relevant parts."  This is particularly relevant
when going back to look at older messages.  Here's a good
(actual) quote from the page:

"While we hope you aren't one of them, some people failed writing in  
school; others just forgot that most written languages (English  
included) are read from top down instead of random order."

> I didn't know any of this and always thought that I was supposed to  
> include the whole original message, for some reason.

At some point in the past some computer geek worked out the
"optimal" hueristic and it since became nettiquete.  Then,
when AOL first connected to the Internet everybody gave up
on trying to uphold the social norms and it's been barbarisim
ever since.  ;-)

> I agree that this is important in that we do intend to use this  
> mailing list as an archive of decisions etc, and i can see that we  
> might end up making it very hard to search.

See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-posting
http://ursine.ca/Top_Posting

> I would like to request that, during our may 6 meeting, Karl give us  
> a brief overview of the practices and rationale for how to reply to  
> emails (unless the rules I've listed above say everything already).

The above links plus this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netiquette
say everything I'd want to.  If you'd rather a verbal summary
that's fine too.  We can see at the time what's best.

Karl <kop@meme.com>
Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
                  -- Robert A. Heinlein