In article ,
"George Willer" wrote:
I'm sure you may consider why others of equal rank to you
are convinced that top posting is better.

This is Usenet! Nobody has more rights than anyone else[1], and I would
suggest to you that there is no such thing as a 'rank' on Usenet.
Reputation and perception are what counts on Usenet, both good and bad.

I'll quote your latest epistle and insert my thoughts where appropriate.

George - you seem to have just agreed with me by you inserting your
comments into a quoted article: an inline quoted posting. Was this a
mistake?


In the post that you responded to, I had said that I was giving the
reasons why people should trim the text they are replying to and you
said:

(according to Bill and Larry)

Well, it's actually Bill, Larry, RFC1855, and the general netiquette of
Usenet. You saying that it is 'Bill and Larry' appears to be an attempt
to paint us as the odd people out in desiring this trimming - it is not.
There is even a Wikipedia article on top posting [2][4].

(I don't share your certainty that your way is more efficient, given the
evolution that has happened in usenet habits recently)

I'm wondering what this evolution that you mention might be. Is it:
a) The Endless September[1]?
b) The destruction of so many newsgroups by spammers and spamming?
c) The advent of sporge?
d) The advent of cancel wars?
e) the move to web blogs and forums for many users, and the general
demise of moderated groups?

There are times when the posted rules no longer apply.
You're trying to enforce an old rule that has outlived its' time.

So why doesn't RFC1855 still apply? What parts are outmoded and why? Why
has it not been declared obsolescent and a replacement RFC issued like
so many other RFCs have? If the answer is that "I like top posting" then
is this a sufficient reason to ignore these 'rules'? Is it OK for others
who may disagree with other elements of Netiquette to also ignore these
rules too?

Your example is like
insisting driving driving on the right side is always the correct way since
there are places, even here in the USA where it is the wrong side.)

Could you give me a few examples where it's OK to drive on the left side
of a two-way public road in the USA? What are the normal consequences of
not doing so on a highway? In fact I deliberately did not choose the
'driving on the wrong side of the road' example since the consequences
of driving like this are drastic and abrupt, unlike Usenet, where you
will not die, become injured, or lose money because you choose not to
follow RFC1855.

( Times have certainly changed. What percentage of posters do you imagine
have ever even heard of that arcane rule you quote?

What percentage of posters know all the local, county, state and federal
laws they have to abide by? Is this ever treated as an excuse in law?
Considering that RFC1855 "Netiquette" is recommended for all people who
post articles, it's not quite a set of 'arcane' rules, is it. Did you
know that Comcast and Earthlink, some of the largest ISP's in the USA
mentions abiding by Netiquette and give examples in their FAQs for
Internet usage.

Of those, what percentage do you imagine agree with it? How many have been arrested for
violating it?

I have no idea, just as you have no idea of how many people agree with
all the laws you are subject to where you live. At the moment, no one I
know has been arrested for ignoring RFC1855. Some people have lost
posting privileges on certain servers for having done so - so its a
minor form of Usenet death.

Just because they don't know any better does not make it right (IMHO).
Didn't your parents ever say to you, "If all your friends jumped off a
cliff, would you jump off too?"

(... I'm sure many others DO PREFER to see replies posted at the
top.)

Just like there are others who prefer to see For Sale advertisements in
newsgroups whose charter specifically bans them - you may not agree with
it but it may be better to abide by the conventions. Without people
abiding by RFC1855, we may as well just have one massive newsgroup
called usenet, where everyone posts anything they like - where there are
absolutely no rules what you should post or not post. I don't think you
believe that there should be no rules, I think you disagree with a
subset of the ones generally recommended.

On usenet I read only those
threads that interest me...

Which indicates you are very focussed in which threads you read and pay
close attention to the evolving threads that have come from a root
thread. I tend to read about 30 newsgroups and scan hundreds of articles.

... so I have time to spend on the mail lists and large
bulletin boards that I moderate. That's why I object to wasting time
scrolling to find what someone has to say when it could be politely added to
the top.)

I put it to you that there are significant differences between email,
web forums and Usenet. The way that messages propagate and the way they
are put to the reader are different. On email, I favour top posting with
appropriate trimming. On web forums with threading, I favour unquoted
replies. On web forums without threading, I favour selected quotes with
replies. On Usenet, it should be inline posting with trimmed and
paraphrased quotes. Sometimes these general rules have to be broken, but
they remain useful defaults to me.

Presumably, as bulletin board moderator, there is a Netiquette
associated with people posting to your bulletin boards (are these
bulletin boards, or are they web forums?) If the a sizable minority
decided that parts of your Netiquette rules were invalid (because "times
have changed"), then would this be acceptable? Let us say that they have
now decided that swearing in their messages was now OK - what would you
do and what should you do? What would you do if you had no power to stop
them swearing?

(certainly not! That's when I scroll, to go deep enough to find context if
I don't remember it from the post being replied to.)

Are you saying that you should fully quote the article you are
responding to after your reply? One of the other issues I have with this
is the extra bandwidth this takes up[4]. Not everyone who is going to
read your postings is going to have fast broadband access, or even
access to a fast usenet server. You might be OK, but it's not you you
that you need to keep in mind as the target audience - it's everyone out
there reading usenet.

(I'm using IE, so mine works the same way. On this point we agree. That's
why I think top posting is better than bottom posting.)

I think we can both agree that bottom posting with full quoting is the
worst way of posting to Usenet. This means top posting *is* better, but
my contention is that inline posting is better still.

(I'm saying it is irresponsible to expect every reader to scroll through
EVERY post all the way to the bottom to find new content.)

I not I'm making that argument. If you have that impression that I am,
then I have not done an adequate job in my postings to tell you what I
do want. Quoting an article you are responding to does not require the
inclusion of all its text - the less quoted the better, as long as it
provides context. A single quoted line is often adequate.

(I'm pleased we have this common ground to agree on. I tend to be a little
grumpy when a post of mine is dismissed by some ruffian who is barely
literate issues a proclamation that I'm wrong without even an attempt to
understand what I've written.

"On the Internet, no one can tell if you're a dog." - well up to the
point that an entity's behaviour set is limited to that of a dog. More
like, "If it walks like a duck and quack's like a duck..." [What I'm
saying is that I agree with you here]

I don't have any advanced "education", but I began
learning and thinking 71 years ago.

71 years is an advanced education in itself. As long as you've been
building on that knowledge and experience in those then it is of far
greater value to me and others than someone who went from high school to
PhD to get the pieces of paper without life experience and then think
they know it all because of those pieces of paper. As stupid as
believing that film stars' opinions on anything other than acting are
automatically more valuable than yours or mine.

However, I'll still claim my EQUAL rank
on usenet as just another guy.)

I believe reputation is what ranks us on Usenet. I would hate to be
categorised as equal with some of the people I see 'contributing' to
various Usenet newsgroups.

I see posting on Usenet as not what is better for me, but what is likely
to be reasonable to the most number of readers out there that I want to
influence. As such I abide by Netiquette rules that may be detrimental
to my own interests but are good for the community.

Bill Lee

Notes:
[1] Well actually Usenet server administrators and ISPs have more rights
that you and I since they can prevent posting or propagation of articles
to or through their systems.
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_posting
[3] http://www.albion.com/netiquette/rule4.html
[4] Yes, I did read the line in that article: "Those who prefer inline
replies, on the other hand, are occasionally vocal and "evangelizing" on
the subject, which others can find annoying at times." mea culpa