syntax oddities

[Richard Damon]

On 5/18/18 8:25 AM, Paul Moore wrote:
> On 18 May 2018 at 12:08, Rhodri James <rhodri at kynesim.co.uk> wrote:
> There are two completely independent cultures here. In "Corporate"
> cultures like where I work (where IT and business functions interact a
> lot, and business users typically use tools like Outlook) top-posting
> is common, conventional, and frankly, effective. Conversely, in purely
> technical communities like open source, where conventions originated
> in low-bandwidth channels like early networks, interspersed posting,
> heavy trimming and careful quoting are the norm. I've participated in
> both communities for 30 years or more, and you deal with people in the
> way that they find most comfortable.
>
> It's polite to follow the conventions of the community that you're
> interacting with - so on this mailing list, for example, quoting and
> posting inline is the norm and top-posting is considered impolite.
> Arguing about how the community's conventions are wrong is also
> impolite :-) I'm reminded of the old stereotypes of Brits speaking
> English NICE AND LOUDLY to foreigners to help them understand what
> we're saying... (Disclaimer: I'm a Brit, so I'm poking fun at myself
> here :-))
>
> Paul

I would divide the two communities/cultures differently. Top Posting is
reasonable, effective and common in an environment where the primary
recipients of the message can be assumed to have read, and likely
remembered, the previous messages, and they are included mostly as a
quick memory aid to remember WHICH conversation this message pertains
with, or to a lessor extent, to help bring someone new to the
conversation up to speed or if the message is pulled up out of an
archive. Here the real focus is on the new content and the past record
is mostly a 'foot note' (which is expected to be at the end). Since
people tend to ignore the quoted material, if often ends up unedited and
gets long (this actual is useful when someone new gets added to the
email chain)

The second community has a wide audience, and it is expected that many
people may come in at 'the middle' of a discussion, and thus the message
with the history is likely to be read as a whole. It also can generally
be assume that prior messages are available, thus less context is
'needed'. Here Interspersed/Bottom posting works better (Interspersed if
responding point by point, Bottom if single point or responding to the
message en-total.)

Mailing list, Usenet, Forums and the like all tend to fall into the
second category, but people more used to the more private type of
conversations may have bad habits and not think about how it should
transition to the different environment.

-- 
Richard Damon