[sclug] Top posting rules OK?

[Neil Haughton]

>  
>
>>The interesting question is why a standard was set without doing a
>>usability study first.
>>    
>>
>
>They're not standards, they're a community-agreed etiquette
>

Oh _please_!

> and were "set" by
>general user consensus 
>

Oh _please_ again!

Who exactly is this 'community', to whom you refer? If you mean the 
general emailing community then quite clearly the community agreed to do 
whatever they damn well please.  If not, who conferred on them the right 
to determine how others behaved? The general user consensus is no more 
than what the majority decide to do, by collective decision or by 
default. For better or worse the 'community' has clearly decreed that 
top (or bottom, or middle) posting is okay. Fire it off, Fit and Forget. 
Whatever. Tilting at windmills is not going to make a blind bit of 
difference to what the majority do (I'm warming to my theme here) - 
there're too many of them, and they have lives to lead. If they cared 
they would try to spell proper as well.

I had an email from an estate agent recently that referred to a property 
being in an 'area of outstanding natural duty'. Who is going to convince 
such people how to correspond correctly?

Now I really do need that beer. :-P

Regards,

Neil Haughton