[cobalt-security] RE: Posting habits

["Dom Latter" <d.latter@xxxxxxx>]

Sorry to drag this out further, but Tony made some interesting points:

> 2. Mail client automatically starts the reply at the top.

I expect your car usually starts journeys in a garage - but
you don't leave it there.  The *correct* place for the cursor
is indeed at the top - you then work your way down through
your reply, snipping and quoting as appropriate.

> 3. Even though I'm usually an evil top-poster I usually take the time
> to trim out the bottom irrelevant copy.

It's the multiply quoted crud from people that don't bother to 
trim that gets so objectionable, particularly if you take the digest.

> I haven't seen anyone complain of 'top-posting' on any of those lists.
> What's up with that?

Newbies, innit.  Until quite recently top-posting was such a 
non-issue that the various fairly old netiquette guides barely
mention it - everybody knew that answers come *after* questions.

> message. Bottom posting is annoying to me because I need 
> to scroll through the all-ready  read top crap to get to
> the new info.

Then people are not trimming enough.

> 6. Net things are in constant flux. Things change. People 
> change. Software changes.

Good point; but I don't think mailing lists have changed.

I'll just say that my original complaint was about HTML / MIME;
the top-posting bit was an after-thought.