MODERATION REQUEST -- namecalling, sniping and other childish behavior

[Joe Rhett]

This person evidently feels that their (misguided) opinion is so perfect
and true that they are justified in calling people names and talking down
to them like a child.  Given that this individual appears to have missed
the point of the original post entirely, he's just spewing smoke.

I am officially requesting that this person be asked to take their
condescending and insulting behavior elsewhere.

On Tue, Jan 13, 2004 at 10:24:05PM +0000, Paul L. Allen wrote:
> Joe Rhett writes: 
> 
> >Besides, I have a threaded mail viewer.
> 
> Gosh, that's handy. If somebody responds to a post that's a couple
> of days old without quoting anything at all you can spend extra time
> threading back to read the original question so you know what he's
> talking about.  If you haven't already trashed the original.  In those
> cases where some idiot doesn't quote, it's useful - but I'd prefer not
> to have to resort to threading back and forth to decipher a post. 
> 
> British Standards on engineering drawings fell for a variant of this
> fallacy a couple of decades ago.  They reasoned that if they substituted
> meaningful constructs that took time to draw with meaningless constructs
> that took time to comprehend, they could save a few minutes of a
> draughtman's time.  What they ignored is that most engineering drawings
> are drawn once and read many, many times (in a large shop, work would
> be assigned to whoever was free so you might never see one particular
> drawing often enough to memorize it).  Overall, productivity went down
> because of it.  Is that faint line the outline of a screw thread or is
> the drawing warn?  Is that anonymous box a capacitor or a resistor or
> a transistor or a logic gate or an inductor or a diode? 
> 
> I mention this merely because others try to justify top-posting because
> it's quicker for them to do it that way, even if it's harder for others
> to follow.  Of course, if everyone saves time by top-posting, because
> everyone reads more posts than they make, then everyone will end up
> spending far more time trying to make sense of what they read than the
> time they save by top-posting.  To those who say they don't have the
> time to do anything other than top-post, I respond that I don't have the
> time to give them answers to their questions (except I say it in my head
> and simply delete their post). 
> 
> [...]
> >Top-posting is the only sensible way to conduct one-sentence responses.
> 
> Nonsense.  Intelligent snipping is the only sensible way to make a
> response of ANY length.  If you top-post an answer that looks like it
> might be of interest to me then I MIGHT just scroll down to find out what
> the question was and if your answer really is of interest to me.  If
> you top-post a question asking for clarification to somebody else's
> answer I WILL ignore it.  As will many other people. 
> 
> [Vast quantity of text from a much earlier post in the thread before
> it digressed into a discussion of top-posting SNIPPED WITH EXTREME
> PREJUDICE] 
> 
> You, sir, are an idiot.  Unfortunately, you are too much of an idiot
> to even realize that you are an idiot.  Not only does top-posting
> waste brainwidth, all that needlessly-quoted material wastes bandwidth. 
> 
> Allow me to insert a clue suppository.  Top-posting is arrogant because
> it assumes that people are so enamoured of your pearls of wisdom that
> they will put in extra effort to comprehend your post by scrolling up
> and down repeatedly to tie up your points with bits in the original
> post.  Top-posting without trimming unnecessary material is arrogant
> because it assumes that everyone reading the list always reads it at work
> over a high-bandwidth connection and never, ever reads it in a hotel room
> over a 56K dial-up over a phone line constructed from damp string held
> together with chewing gum.  Top-posting without trimming unecessary
> material is arrogant because it says your time is far too important to
> spend doing something that would benefit others. 
> 
> Top-posting essentially says "my time is more important than yours, all 10
> (or 100, or 1,000, or 10,000) of you put together."  You are certainly
> entitled to hold that opinion, but please do not be surprised if the rest
> of us disagree. And do not be surprised if few people show any inclination
> to give you help or advice.  You might get away with top-posting if you're
> one of the implementors, because then your time really is more important
> than that of most others on the list, but if you're looking for advice
> then you're asking people to spend time they don't have to helping you
> out for free, so you should make it as easy for them as possible. 
> 
> I mention all this not because I think it will do you the slightest bit
> of good but that there may be a few people slightly less clueless than
> yourself who were slightly distracted when they read your post and were
> persuaded by your arguments. 
> 
> -- 
> Paul Allen
> Softflare Support 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Joe Rhett                                                      Chief Geek
JRhett at Isite.Net                                      Isite Services, Inc.


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