Re: [tlug] Keeping that sheet on list [wuz: Port forwarding/UPnP in Japan]

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

lain. writes:
 > On 2023年11月04日 22:00, the silly Stephen J. Turnbull claimed to
 > have said:

Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball!

 > > It's really not fair to the poster to ask them to keep track of
 > > your preferences.  Some folks like the personal replies and
 > > promote those threads.  Jus' sayin'
 > 
 > It's not a matter of preference,

LOL.  Then why did you ask, and specifically for yourself?  Very few
people do, which is why it's a PITA to keep track of.

 > it just makes it easier to accidentally reply off-list.

Which doesn't get anybody fired or pwned, and it would be much less of
a problem if almost all MUAs didn't suck.  Eg, I gather yours doesn't
make it easy to say "If there's a list-post header set reply-to to the
list."  No wait, you use a Mutt-a-like, so it shouldn't be a massive
problem for you.

And surprisingly enough in a world where all the defaults suck[1],
there is actually a good default algorithm for the ... uh, "naive"
... user, and it's mostly nicely configurable with existing header
fields.[2]  If all common MUAs used it, we wouldn't be having this
convo.

 > In the beginning I was against bottom posting, people complained,
 > and here I am adapting to bottom posting for other people's
 > convenience.

C'mon, at least learn the terminology.  Everybody hates *bottom*
posting.  (Even Gmail learned not to encourage it.)  *Top* posting
works OK in a tight organization where the important information gets
communicated in meetings anyway, or if you're the boss.  It works OK
for stupid stuff that ought to be a web form anyway like finding out
how many people are going to be at the nomikai.

People who are trying to communicate complex technical material trim
the quote to appropriate context and post *interline* (or "inline").
It's easy to do if you have a full-ass editor in your MUA, makes the
ebb and flow of the conversation much easier to follow, and basically
makes academic-style citation[3] unnecessary.  What's not to like?


Footnotes: 
[1]  Steven Lawrence Baur.  He was right!

[2]  The main thing missing is a header field to say "Frequently posts
to this list should default to private replies unless the reply author
is quite sure they want it distributed".  I wrote up a draft RFC in
like 1998, but the majors -- Thunderbird, Evolution -- were really
against it because "we know our users and they don't want it and it's
not a wire protocol anyway so buzz off with your RFC".  Google didn't
exist yet, and Outlook was Outhouse (and still is) so ....  And the
minors (Mutt, Gnus) didn't need it because their users could write it
for themselves if they wanted it but they were already used to a
r(eply to author), f(ollowup to all), l(ist will distribute followup)
convention.

[3]  Chicago Manual of Style.