Bottom posting v top posting

[Erik Christiansen]

On 13.05.18 15:31, Brian Salter-Duke wrote:
> On Sun, May 13, 2018 at 03:03:55PM +1000, Erik Christiansen wrote:
> > On 13.05.18 09:52, Brian Salter-Duke wrote:
> > > It is time we gave up bottom posting!
...
> Eric, I tried to email you direct, but you do not allow that, so I will have to
> send to the list my anger at your post.

Please understand that I would have returned it to the list in any event.

> Who the hell do you think you are to lecture me in that way?

Anger is good in a dangerous situation, but here it does seem to impede
understanding. From your fulsome fullquote, I have requoted only the
dictatorial challenge in your OP, which caused me to offer up a pin to
the balloon of your fantasy.

> I have been using mutt for pretty well as long as you have no doubt. I
> am perfectly happy to bottom post. I have always bottom posted on the
> mutt lists. I understand why the mutt community prefers it. I prefer it.

No, you have told us we must abandon our optimal practice in favour of
an ignorant fashion. I responded accordingly, in a constructively
educational manner, appropriate to the nature of the challenge.

> The problem is that nobody outside the mutt community who email me use it.

A calmer reading of my post ought to reveal that it is an attempt to
help you learn that a difference is not 'a priori' a problem. I write
Danish to my relatives, German to some friends, and English where that
suits. It is no mark of a developed intellect to be so dogmatic as to
insist that various communities must conform to a single norm. If you
think carefully, you will observe that in the sentence above, you
logically connect the problem with the last pronoun there. That is where
you will find the remedy, rather than in attempting to force conformity
on disparate communities.

> Also, it would not go down well if I tried to educate my research colleagues 
> at universities all over the world to bottom post.

On this list we would ask them to do so. As for elsewhere, I refer you
to your sig.

> We have had 20 years or so to educate people to bottom post. We have almost
> entirely failed.

No we have made no attempt to do so outside lists, but you still fail to
learn to tolerate difference in other communities.

> It turns out that my random sig that I use for this list is highly appropriate.
> I assure you that it really is random.

Yes it is ironically appropriate. If only you could learn from it what
you have so far failed to learn from gentle prodding of your intellect,
then we would be spared further effort to help you man up and accept
evident difference.

Erik

-- 
Gnothi seauton, the Ancient Greek aphorism "Know thyself", was inscribed in the 
pronaos (forecourt) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi according to the Greek
periegetic (travelogue) writer Pausanias. The Suda, a tenth century encyclopedia
of Greek Knowledge, says it is a warning to pay no attention to the opinion of
the multitude.