top posting (was Audio/Video Problems)

[David Lang]

On Sun, 6 Jan 2013, O. Sinclair wrote:

> My dear friends, can we cool tempers a bit please?
>
> personally I do not care if you post top, bottom or "quote"-style. We try to 
> help as best we can, even if a person sometimes may be a newcomer, may not 
> have the best written English or do not adequately describe the details of 
> their problems.
>
> So why, oh why, is this "how do I format my mail" so extremely important that 
> some are willing to leave the community, others that I know as helpful 
> suddenly post rude emails and we find ourselves fighting over... what?

I don't think that people are leaving (or threatening to leave) over the format.

Instead people are leaving because of the fights and the "we're better off 
without you if you dare post in the wrong way" attitude that's being expressed 
in this thread.

I have seen 'communities' that were that rigourous about message formatting, and 
they tend not to work well over the long run.

It's fine to have a standard, and it's fine to let people know when they are 
violating it, but it's not acceptable to be dogmatic and abusive about it.

I've now gone back and found the posts that started this mess, and the initial 
comments (and reactions) were not out of line, but things then very quickly 
spiraled out of control.

David Lang