[ubuntu-za] Top Posting and other sins

[Robert Holm]

Hi

I see that there is still quite a bit of Top Posting on the list and 
it occurred to me that perhaps the meaning of the term is not 
understood by everyone, so perhaps it would be in order to quote 
the following from the Ubuntu Mailing List Rules of Etiquette:

Quote

1) "Why should I place my response *below* the quoted text?
The usual reading flow is from top to bottom, and people expect 
a chronological sequence similar to this. That's the standard. 
This may sound like a weak argument, but people are not used 
to reading the other way around, especially people who are reading 
a lot of articles, (and would therefor qualify as the ideal people to
answer 
your question). When reading your response they have no idea 
what you are referring to and they have to jump backwards and 
forwards to get a sense of what it's about.
In short, reading the posting becomes more difficult and time wasting"

"And besides: doesn't it look stupid to first get the answer and then
see the question?
(Aside from 'Jeopardy' of course)"

2) "Limit your signature to no more than 4 lines. Most of the 
useful stuff in signatures is already in the message headers 
anyway and anything else just wastes space in the archives."

3) "No HTML. This setting is configurable 'per email address'. 
This means creating an Ubuntu-za entry in your address book 
and setting the properties accordingly. Please take the trouble 
to do this."

End of quote.

I paraphrased the above slightly in the interests of keeping it
short(er).

If I am trespassing on the list administrator's territory here, I
apologise. 
Feel free to chastise me.

Regards

Robert