From: Paul Louden <paulthenerd_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:05:38 -0500

Buddy Brannan wrote:
>
>
> So, you don't say exactly, whom are you addressing? There has been
> lots of top posting. And lots of list policing. And, well, I daresay
> the top posting has more useful content (even if it's lazy). While
> list guidelines (and good netiquette) dictate inline as opposed to top
> posting, common courtesy would ask that you let us know who is being
> addressed when posting publicly to a large group. Of course, common
> courtesy would also ask that you call people's infractions out to them
> in private rather than publicly, which of course would bypass the
> whole issue of who on the list is being called out.
1) The email was directly in response to a specific email. Obviously I
was responding to the author of that one email. If your client doesn't
show you which email it was in response to, it's hiding essential
information from you and perhaps you should consider another client, or
enabling "threaded" view in your current one to better follow the direct
flow of messages.

2) I've tried private responses. They are frequently met with challenges
to prove that I have the authority to give such a challenge. A public
response not only raises public awareness that the list has guidelines
(even the link automatically appended to every single email message
on-list isn't enough it seems) but means that other members of the list
administration are aware this person has been challenged so that he
isn't flooded with private emails about the issue.

3) If I don't challenge a person openly, when I challenge someone else I
frequently get "well this person did it" from people who thought it was
acceptable because it did happen previously, and they saw no obvious
signs challenging it.

It's very clear that, for this list, occasional PUBLIC reminders help
maintain awareness that we wrote the etiquette guidelines for a reason,
and honestly expect people to read and respect them here.
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Received on 2008-10-08