News Group Posts

top posting cultural bias newsgroup conventions

I wonder if there are still people who, like the person I argued with in the post below, still will not accept html mail? If so, they must not get much of anything from anyone and must be VERY grumpy :-)

As to "bottom posting" - that's pretty much a dead issue. The newsgroups themselves are pretty much dead, having been replaced by forums. None of this matters at all now.

From: Tony Lawrence <tony@pcunix.com>
Subject: Re: Top posting or Bottom?  WHO THE HELL CARES!
Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2002 14:37:05 -0500

Jay Maynard wrote:
> On Sun, 01 Dec 2002 13:13:50 -0500, Tony Lawrence <tony@pcunix.com> wrote:
> 
>>The whole Top Posting stuff reminds me of html mail.  It's an 
>>abomination, it often ticks me off, but there is absolutely no point in 
>>fighting it.
> 
> 
> Actually, I reject HTML email out of hand, with a message that says I accept
> email in text only. Isn't postfix wonderful?

Obviously you don't have clients (or don't care about keeping them).  If 
I sent a message like that back, I bet half my customers wouldn't know 
what to do - they don't even KNOW they are sending HTML.  Heck, my wife 
doesn't even know that (and yes, I've tried to explain it to her).

> 
> 
>>Top posting is generally the wrong thing to do, but like html, it isn't
>>ALWAYS wrong, and enough people do it that the rest of us just need to bite
>>our tongues and get used to it.
> 
> 
> Yes, it is always wrong. Period.

That's probably what the dinosaurs thought about the mammals too.

People's brains work in different ways.  Some people don't like the form 
of interspersed quoting/replying that we are used to.  I suspect it is 
perhaps related to the whole dumbing down of computers stuff -  the 
folks who have been at this a long time think differently.  We never 
would have gotten into this stuff early on if we did not think 
differently, but what is logical to us isn't always logical to someone 
else.

Different isn't wrong.  Enforcing your social conventions upon other 
people is what causes mild discomfort and discrimination at one end and 
wars and terrorism at the other.  Do we want to homogenize the world? 
We need to grow up and allow different strokes for different folks.  I'm 
reaching way beyond the minor example of top posting here, but isn't it 
interesting how Americans are so quick to condemn such quaint Muslim 
customs as stoning while brooking no interference with our own methods 
of capital punishment?  We criticize them for forcing women to wear 
veils, but think nothing of forcing women to cover their breasts here. 
We supposedly have freedom of religion, but I doubt Americans would 
allow the Oriental penis worship cults to practice here.

It's time to stop making laws about behaviour, in or out of newsgroups. 
  If you can't stand the sight of a six foot penis, don't look at it.  If 
you can't bring yourself to read a top posted comment, pass it by.  But 
YOUR cultural imprintings shouldn't be law.  That doesn't mean that you 
shouldn't be free to post in the interspersed method or have a more 
conventional religion.  Everyone else needs to allow you your freedom 
too.  I don't think that offense of cultural values should be an excuse 
for any negative reaction at all.  If you want to politely explain why 
you find Jebus more appealing than a penis, or interspersed posting more 
coherent than top posting, fine, have at it.  But the other person 
shouldn't have to listen to you or change their actions just because you 
don't like it.

-- 

Tony Lawrence
Unix/Linux Support Tips, How-To's, Tests and more: http://aplawrence.com
Free Unix/Linux Consultants list: http://aplawrence.com/consultants.html

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