In the context of a long thread about style and readability[*] Joel M. Halpern
summarized:
I do want to re-iterate two points I have seen that are important. Both are
relevant no matter what style of posting you like.
1) People need to read the whole email before composing their response. (You
can draft ideas while reading, but make sure you actually read the whole
thing before you finalise your response.)
2) People need to edit longer threads so that they do not copy large amounts
of redundant and useless text.
I would think that there is a 3rd point:
3) Think about what you would want to communicate, who to communicate to, and
what style fits best. Fisking, classical Oxbridge rhetoric, top-posting,
satire, acronyms (WFM, or 1+), one-liners, essays, YELLING,
not-replying-at-all, &c, &c all seem to have their own effectivity and charm.
In that contest I observe that by looking at the "From: " header you can often
predict the style that is used while in an ideal world you would like to see
correlation with the "Subject: " header.
--Olaf
[*] See for the whole thread:
https://www.ietf.org/ibin/c5i?mid=6&rid=49&gid=0&k1=933&k2=53746&tid=1285574931
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf