[Tutor] Civil discourse from a newbie's perspective

[Alan Gauld]

On 02/10/12 13:17, Mark Lawrence wrote:

> I do not intend helping anyone who insists on top posting despite
> requests not to do so.

That is of course your prerogative, we can reply to, or ignore, 
whichever posts we choose. But we need to be realistic about top 
posting. It is the norm, and generally preferred in business thanks 
mainly to Microsoft outlooks default settings. But it is what people 
have become used to in the commercial world. That is inevitably moving 
into the internet community too.

So we cannot judge too harshly if someone  uses top posting, hopefully 
they will see the advantages of "context posting" (rather than bottom 
posting which can be almost as bad a top posting!) and of stripping 
excess verbiage. They may also observe how much easier it is to get 
useful answers if the follow the popular idioms!

But we all have the choice to engage or ignore with anyone on the list 
just as we choose.

-- 
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/