Re: Do we need a way to moderate mailing lists?

On Sat, Jan 16, 2021 at 03:34:32PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)alvh(dot)no-ip(dot)org> writes:
> > On 2021-Jan-16, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> >> That "quoting entire messages on reply" is something I see far too often
> >> here. I have been meaning to mention this problem. Thousands of people
> >> are reading postings here, so it pays to take time to trim down what
> >> others have to view.
>
> > Yes. Gmail, by hiding the quoted part of the message, has taught people
> > that it's okay to leave the whole thing in place. For most of the rest
> > of the world, it's an annoyance.
>
> Top-posting goes along with that. The gmail style of top-posting and
> not trimming what's quoted is sort of okay, as long as you don't actually
> need to read any of what's quoted (but then why bother quoting it...)
>
> The combination of bottom-posting and not trimming what you quoted is
> actually the worst of all possible worlds, because then people are
> forced to scroll through a whole lot of stuff to see what you added.

Agreed. By telling people not to top-post, we have made it worse in
many cases.

> I see way too many people doing that lately, and to be honest I usually
> stop reading their messages once I see that that's what they did.
> You should only quote enough to remind the reader of what you're
> responding to.

That is also what I do.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> https://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB https://enterprisedb.com

The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness, Bruce Lee