E-mail etiquette (was: Re: [lug] phantom irc traffic)

[David L. Anselmi]

Hugh Brown wrote:
> My apologies.  I thought about trimming right as I clicked send.  It 
> also seems that top/bottom posting really is a vi vs. emacs sort of 
> thing, along with reply to list vs. reply to sender.

No, it's not vi vs. emacs.  Your editor is a personal, private choice. 
Your email is for other people.  So there is email etiquette but not 
editor etiquette.

Regardless what people might like to write, does anyone on the list 
prefer reading top-posted messages?  Not as in "it doesn't matter, 
depends, for some replies it's OK," but as in "oh no, another 
bottom-post--I have to get off this list!"

It seems to me that the culture on this list, and others like it, is not 
to top-post.  We have found replying below quoted text to be a useful 
practice.

You've seen web forums that present a thread on one page.  Do they put 
the most recent post at the top?  No.

When writing other people, whose email experience doesn't include 
mailing lists, top-posting might be more appropriate.  But even then, if 
I have multiple thoughts in reply to different parts of their message 
I'll reply below their quotes.

Dave