Re: [cobalt-users] top posting? My last comment on the subject

[Phoenix Hawk <phawk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 5 Apr 2001, Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:
> Throughout the history of humanity, too many times we have falled into the
> trap of looking for That One Right Way, and then trying to convince
> everyone else (by force if necessary) that Our Way is The One Right Way. I
> say it's about time we learned from our mistakes.

  Personally, I believe that whichever style is adopted, it should be
  based on the situation. If you have a person who cannot indent/format
  his or her question properly, like this:

  "hi list, i have a question about cobalt raq4i and i need help coz
   the whole thing just went down on me yesterday after i patch up
   all the latest security patches and i wonder if anyone else has
   the same problems and i really really need your help. please
   help me! my cobalt has the following specs: 128MB ram, etc etc
   ............. "

  and this goes on for about 200 lines without a break, nobody will
  bother to help the poor soul reformat his/her paragraphs and
  bullet-point the hardware specs and list of packages. The most
  appropriate response (for this situation, IMHO) would be to
  top-post.

  However...

  Some postings that have properly bulleted questions like this

  "1. Should I run portsentry on a system with 32MB RAM?
      Does it take up a lot of resources?

   2. If I need to install a DBMS, which is less resource
      intensive? MySQL, postgresql? interbase?"

  and so on would deserve a blow-by-blow reply (assuming
  it's worth replying and not found in the archives :P) and would
  make more sense than if the reply is lumped together in
  a "top-post". Also, this would reflect that the reply-er
  has indeed looked through the original post closely and
  has not done a "impulse" response. It just seems this way,
  doesn't it?

  Based on my personal observation, people who use
  microsoft('s braindead) products will top-post more
  often than those who don't. MS's influence is actually
  quite substantial and subtle eh? BEWARE! :P

  We did a survey on this issue in one of the computer
  mediated communications course some time back last year
  and concluded that there is no ONE right way, too. It
  all depends on the situation, the preference.. and also,
  the "limitations" of the software you are using. :P

  My 2 cents, have an uneventful day at work! :)

  Regards.