Re: [tlug] Top-posting (was: plonk [Re: Classes])

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Aside to the moderator:

I think usability/app design discussions are on-topic for this list,
and (as long as we don't get too seriously into the question of
changing TLUG practice) this is a usability discussion, not a
tlug-admin topic.

Bruno Raoult writes:
 > On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 7:52 PM, Pietro Zuco <mailto@example.com> wrote:
 > 
 > > This is a different topic: You may be in charge of the list, but
 > > what if 90% of people don't agree on one single rule? Would you
 > > just ignore them because you were elected in a "democratic" way

Historically, moderators/list admins in TLUG have not "set" the rules.
They may exercise judgment as to finding out what the rule actually
is, and publicly announce it, in cases where a decision seems (to
them) necessary.  I really rather doubt that the list admin team would
refuse to follow an apparent consensus if they guessed wrong, though.

OTOH, if the rule was established in the past, and consensus has
failed recently, yes, the moderator should enforce the rule, and I
think they would on this list.  This is no different in principle from
firewalling a poorly programmed spider because it's hitting your site
way too often.  Posting rules are a protocol that improves
communication for everybody, including almost all of those who would
prefer a different rule -- if everybody would follow it.  But almost
nobody prefers no rule (at least, not if they've experienced it!)

The reason enforcement is done by moderator and not some kind of robot
is that there are many exceptions that one would may like to make: new
members, occasional posts from those who have demonstrated they know
the rules but for some reason have decided to disobey the rules "just
this once", cases where humor requires a top-post, etc.  (The only one
I'm sure we all agree on is new members, but I'm quite sure we agree
exceptions should be made there.)

 > > But this is not the case, the environment didn't change, we are
 > > using the same technology and interface as 20 years ago! For this
 > > reason I don't see any real reason that justify the change of a
 > > rule that is working fine since the beginning of TLUG.
 > 
 > This is just fine! But I won't agree when you say we are using the
 > same technology than in 1992. This was mostly usenet (for the lucky
 > ones who had access to it, I guess a few of us - not me).

Actually, TLUG is using the same technology as we did 17 years ago: a
mailing list.  The MLM has improved from a sendmail group alias on
somebody's host to a real MLM (originally smartlist, IIRC, now
Mailman).  But nobody (except the list admin and moderators) really
cares much about that, except that it's easy for new members to sign
up.  MUAs have improved in the sense that they now handle multimedia,
but we don't use that.  In fact, many people (htough few TLUGgers) now
use MUAs that are far less powerful than elm or pine (remember them? 
maybe not ;-) was.

 > >     TLUG list are public, all subscriber receives all emails.  Those that
 > >     aren't subscribed can view all emails in the archives.  If this was
 > >     private correspondence then it might make sense having the history in
 > >     every email because some of the recipients may not have been privy to
 > >     the whole conversation but this is not the case."
 > 
 > I might just not agree with this! If I go on holidays, I won't look
 > in 3 weeks archives, one mail by one...  And newcomers won't find
 > archives anyway... I just went to TLUG web site, and there is no
 > obvious link to the archive.

This is very sad, because it's true.  Look what I found in your post:

    List-Archive: <http://lists.tlug.jp/ML>

But very few MUAs grok the List-* headers.

 > If *we* (small villages resisting - Asterix village!) to pretend we
 > are right, against everybody (including your family and friends),

Once again, "everybody" is not the standard.  When I am emailing or
posting in a context for "everybody", I often *do* top-post (though I
typically trim, at least the accumulated footers and .sigs).  We do
have a choice of style in every message we compose, and there's
nothing in TLUG that says we need to inter-line our responses in other
venues.

 > we should question-mark...  Is 1992 rule still the best one today? 
 > What are your children doing? They will make the law after you
 > (they started already), and this is all top-posting.

I don't know any technical lists that generally allow top-posting,
even though on some most of the participants are young enough to be my
kids.  As far as I can tell, technically-oriented posters, regardless
of age, prefer to compose their messages the old-fashioned way.

Some do make exceptions for people posting from crippled platforms
(ie, soi-disant smart-phones), but not all.

Examples of tech lists where top-posting is preferred would be
welcome....