Xfce ML FAQ - v0.3

[Brian J. Tarricone]

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Auke Kok wrote:
> o Quoting style?
> 
> It's very hard to understand a thread of messages if they become replies
> to reply and everyone mixes quoting styles. That's why there is
> something called "quoting style", that describes how you should quote
> the previous posters contents when you reply to a mailinglist message.
> 
> We prefer that you use "Bottom quoting". That means that you should put
> your reply _below_ the original posters message. That way the contents
> are in chronological order and you can read the entire message thread
> without figuring out where the reply belongs to.
> 
> Here's a good FAQ on how to quote:
> 
> http://web.presby.edu/~nnqadmin/nnq/nquote.html
> 
> Basically:
> 
> + quote at the bottom
> + prune text from the quote that is irrelevant
> + remove footers and headers (condense)
> + put the reply directly next to (in between) the original text

I spent a few minutes reading this, and I couldn't figure out why this
sounded so weird.  And then I realised... it's "bottom posting", not
"bottom quoting"!  Bottom quoting is, if you think about it, exactly the
opposite of what you want to advocate.  That means "put the quoted
material on the bottom and type your post up top.  So that's two things
to fix:

We prefer that you use "bottom posting" ...

and

+ quote at the top
or
+ post at the bottom

In addition to posting the FAQ regularly to the list, perhaps it should
be put on the website somewhere as well?  For ML newbies, you have to
have really impeccable timing to join the list right as the FAQ is being
posted.  FAQ-posting is more suited to something like usenet where posts
stick around for a while and it's easy to see old stuff without hunting
for an archive.

	-b
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