[erlang-questions] Announcing Erlang.org Code of Conduct

[Bengt Kleberg]

Greetings,

To me there is a difference between manipulating the email of somebody 
else and leaving it intact. Top posting, and keeping things in an 
archive, both support the latter. Inline quoting insists upon the 
former. I do not like that manipulation so I do not do it.

It is still possible to manipulate top post and archives. It is 
generally considered wrong, so I can relax when I see them. Not so with 
inline quotes.


bengt

On 03/20/2015 01:16 PM, Vincent de Phily wrote:
> On Thursday 19 March 2015 07:58:22 Bengt Kleberg wrote:
>> When advocating top posts as better than inline quotes, one reason
>> mentioned is that it is possible to use inline quotes to manipulate the
>> discussion whereas a top post will keep all quotes un-edited below.
>> Sounds logical.
> It isn't logical. Quotes can be edited and manipulated just as easily wether
> they're partial or in full, inline or at the bottom.
>
> The only reason people are less afraid of manipulative editing in the toppost
> case is that readers will likely not read the quoted text at all, and
> therefore miss out on any manipulation.
>
> If you're afraid of manipulation, read the original, not the quote. That said,
> if somebody intentionally misquotes to change the quoted text's meaning, it
> calls for moderator action.
>
>
>> The retort to this argument is that to prevent improper quotations no
>> quotes should be allowed.
>> I can not make the leap from, if keeping all text is better than editing
>> it, then the really large edit of removing all text is even better.
> The whole purpose of quoting (inline, top, partial, full, whatever) is to
> provide context. I think we can all agree on that ?
>
> As it happens, on a mailing list (especially one with public archives), the
> context of who you're replying to and the full original message is already
> there. So including the whole original message in your reply doesn't add any
> usefull context. Worse : it distracts the reader's attention and is therefore
> worse than not quoting anything.
>
> On the other hand, inline quoting (part of) the original message adds useful
> context. It pinpoints specific parts of the message that you're reacting to.
> It makes email exchanges feel more like a natural discussion (where people
> interrupt each other all the time) than if sending long essays back and forth.
>
> The community will collecively take more time reading your email than it took
> you to write it. So Just like when writing maintainable code, it's worth
> spending time to make your message as readable as possible. Inline quoting
> helps, top posting doesn't.
>
>