[Mailman-Users] The "right" way to reply to a mailing list

[Carl Zwanzig]

On 3/19/2015 6:59 PM, David Andrews wrote:

> Everyone should remember that your needs are not necessarily the same as
> others.  I run some 250 lists that primarily cater to blind persons, and top
> posting is the norm.

And for those lists, it's accepted practice because it works for them. Most 
of the lists I'm on highly discourage top-posting, which works well for 
their readers. (I observe that the message I'm replying to was entire 
bottom-posted.)

> While we can sort it all out, despite quoting style,
> top posting is the easiest in most situations.

Not sure what you mean about quoting there as top-posting pretty much 
dictates the quoting style- everything from previous messages is below the 
new material; it's simply a matter of how much you remove. So even based 
solely on the comments on this list, I think you'll find that top-posting is 
not "the easiest". Well, maybe "easiest" ("laziest"?) in the sense of 
effort, but not "best" or "most useful" or "easiest to follow".

And for forestall the arguments about not trimming messages- sure, memory is 
cheaper now, comm lines are faster, drives are bigger, most people use GUI 
mail readers, but that's no reason to cart around sometimes thousands of 
no-longer-relevant verbiage. Especially when adding a two-line comment...

Anyway, YMMV, mine does.

z!