Home Original page

What does Python fix?

Courageous jkraska at san.rr.com
Sat Jan 19 11:18:23 EST 2002 
>>>Thank you Mark. I often read newsgroups through Google, as I am doing
>>>now. I usually want to scream. "PLEASE TOP POST!" When I read a
>>>newsgroup, I have already read the discussion.

People who top post are often in the same group of people who
post responses to messages without leaving any context at all.
Likewise, these same folks often leave the entire message intact
beneath their top post. Either behavior is a bad behavior.

Leaving the entire message intact really burns for all of those
folks, many in Europe, who have to pay for their connections by
the minute, and there for for the length of the message by the
other poster's bungling. It also burns for people using modems
who have to wait for message downloads that are bloated by
weenies who couldn't be bothered to cut.

Leaving no context at all assumes that the target audience is
using a threaded browser (and doing so in threaded mode). Many
folks do not; in fact the oldest and earliest usenet browsers
don't do this, and there are large numbers of readers who simply
don't look at usenet this way. And in any case, even relying
on the thread doesn't provide the maximum amount of context.

The appropriate way to post is selective snip-and-respond. You
don't quote whole messages, you simply quote select sentences
to provide everyone with per-response context. This is part-
icularly good for new readers of the thread, but even the
active participants often need this context because of the
sure volume of threads some of them are active in. This gives
all involved a clear idea of what it is you are responding to,
and helps those you are talking with remember what it was they
said.

Too many top posters want to treat usenet like a chat room.
It isn't. There are time-delays, and people need the context
to keep track.

Top posters remind me of people who respond to my email messages
a few days late and don't quote that. Tell me why again they think
they're so important that I'm going to remember what it was that
we were talking about?

Top posters just don't get it.

I think of the vast majority of routine top posters as net newbies
who have no net clue. It doesn't help them with this perception that
they are violating net etiquette.

By all means, continue picking your nose in public.

C//
More information about the Python-list mailing list