every time these issues come up on this list, the common defense among the lazy, inconsiderate, "hey, this is how we do it where *i* come from" whiners is that, as long as there is no fedora-approved, at the fedora site itself, official netiquette document, they will feel free to post however they want. which raises the immediately obvious question: once that document is complete and up there, and it *clearly* and *unambiguously* states that thou shalt not top post, and thou shalt not post in HTML, and thou shalt trim thine replies, will that shut you up? seriously. for those of you who work in retail, that question is a variation of what's known as the "closer". if someone just can't make up their mind about whether they're going to buy, and they just keep hemming and hawing, your final strategy is to ask, "what *exactly* will it take for you to buy?" this puts the burden back on the potential customer and, if they can't come up with an answer, every good salesman knows to just cut their losses and walk away. so, to those folks who make all of our lives on this mailing list miserable on a regular basis with their cluelessness and lack of courtesy, here's the "closer": once that netiquette document is posted *at* fedora.redhat.com, and it *explicitly* forbids top posting, and HTML, will you finally stop being such jerks? if the answer's "yes", then that's extra incentive for the doc writers to *finish* the danged thing and get it up there tout de suite, to make this finally go away. if, however, the answer is "no", well, then, we have a problem since that would mean you've been lying to us all this time, telling us that you've been doing this just because the rules weren't written down. but even after they *are*, well, you're going to ignore them, anyway. i *really* hope it doesn't come to that. and a final aside to the netiquette doc writers: word those rules *very* carefully. do not leave them open to interpretation since, as we've seen, these folks love loopholes and playing semantic word games. do not, for instance, say that posting in HTML is "discouraged"; say it's "unacceptable", and point at a longer doc that explains why. don't use phrases like "it's preferable that ...". don't leave those kinds of openings. it's just asking for trouble. rday
