[Sca-cooks] Netiquette and Courtesy (was STOP TOP POSTING!)

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Following up on Celia's well thought out and well stated post:

Clearly sensible and thoughtful editing is the main issue. And 
clearly top posting can be done in a responsible and courteous way.

But i singled out top posting because my experiences in e-mail lately 
on many lists (and it really wasn't this bad 2 years ago) is that far 
too many people who top post don't bother to edit, whereas with many 
other styles of posting people are more likely to edit.

I'm not attacking those here to top post and edit. But many top 
posters get lazy, and top posting without considering the effects on 
others is too easy. They just hit the reply button, type in their 
often rather brief response, and hit send. They don't bother to 
scroll down and see what they're sending. If another top poster does 
the same, then the amount of garbage that gets sent is doubled. Each 
new top poster in the thread compounds the mess. This is far worse on 
Yahoo than it is on this list, since Yahoo adds advertisements anf 
longer footers than this list's e-mail handler. And this sort of top 
posting is really easy in any kind of web mail i've seen or 
experienced.

On a Yahoo list i recently got a message that had EIGHT previous 
messages, so this message had nine headers, nine sig lines, nine 
Yahoo footers and nine sets of advertisements and advertising links 
because somebody was receiving html and most of the footers included 
ads that don't get included with other settings. Of course i'd also 
gotten the previous message which had the SEVEN previous messages 
etc., and the previous message with SIX previous messages etc. - and 
so on.

I get many lists as digests - yes, my choice, but the problem is the 
same in single messages - and i get so annoyed that i EDIT the mail i 
RECEIVE (yes, my own idiosyncrasy, and nice that my e-mail client 
allows it). By removing redundant headers, footers, sig lines, 
messages (when there are 8 repeated messages that i've already 
received and read) and ads, i've reduced the size of some digests by 
75 per cent. I keep the relevant parts of previous messages. I like 
including the relevant parts of previous messages. But with the sort 
of top posting i'm describing, usually completely irrelevant previous 
messages are included.

I don't have endless disk storage space, and i like to save many 
messages because they contain useful information.

I realize that some people are using the odd e-mail program here and 
there that really doesn't allow them to edit - and on a list i own at 
least one listee has some physical problems that makes it difficult 
for her to edit. Anyone in these sorts of situations has no other 
option, other than to change e-mail programs - which isn't always 
possible, if they're posting from work - or to just go off-line, 
which might really be bad for people in isolated places or personal 
situations where they need the human contact they get in e-mail.

On Yahoo (which fortunately this list is not) many list subscribers 
are fairly e-mail clue-free, and in many lists the people are often 
not terribly computer literate.

Computer and e-mail netiquette goes back well over 25 years - but 25 
years ago the computer community was quite small and limited. 
Nowadays, anybody can buy a cheap computer and get e-mail and often 
they don't realize what netiquette is.

Handbooks of personal etiquette go back well into SCA -period (ooh, 
see, content relevant to the subject of this list :-) But on-line 
etiquette, even though it has a history going back over 2 decades is 
not so well known or disseminated.

I keep hoping that in this specific on-line community of SCA-Cooks, 
here in Papa Gunthar's virtual living room, people will be more 
thoughtful, courteous, and sensible.

I don't normally rave and rant (and i've been on this list for 7 
years - longer than i've been going to SCA events), but between the 
unedited top posting on this list recently and on the other lists i 
get (and i don't bother to say anything on mundane lists frequented 
by the barely computer literate) i surpassed my tolerance level.

Please - it only takes a few extra SECONDS to edit previous messages 
if you are not physically disabled or limited by your e-mail program.
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita
whose arthritis is fortunately not yet in her hands,
or at least mostly only in my thumbs, and who
thankfully doesn't use arthritic knees and feet for e-mail