- From: Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 13:39:42 -0800
- To: David Dailey <ddailey@zoominternet.net>
- Cc: Jelle Mulder <pjmulder@xs4all.nl>, www-svg <www-svg@w3.org>, Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@mit.edu>
On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 1:32 PM, David Dailey <ddailey@zoominternet.net> wrote: > Why? This particular form of internet etiquette is new to me, but I've just entered my 40th year of using the Internet. > > Not saying you don't have a reason, it is just not a custom I've encountered before. Or perhaps I encountered it before but just never heard anyone express a social more that would govern it. It's very common in mailing lists, to the point of being explicitly mentioned in multiple standards-group FAQs, such as <http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#Should_I_top-post_or_reply_inline.3F> for the WHATWG and <http://wiki.csswg.org/tools/www-style> for the CSSWG. Many Usenet groups I used to browse had an explicit policy about this, too. There's even a 1995 RFC about it: <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855> > If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you > summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just > enough text of the original to give a context. This will make > sure readers understand when they start to read your response. > Since NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the > postings from one host to another, it is possible to see a > response to a message before seeing the original. Giving context > helps everyone. But do not include the entire original! Wikipedia also has a good summary of stylistic concerns related to mailing lists, and their history: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style> ~TJ
Received on Friday, 15 November 2013 21:40:29 UTC