Hey, Guys, this is a stupid argument, please stop it. Everyone just carry on as you normally would and top post or not as you like. It doesn't really matter. I'm sure the literate adults that populate the list can figure out what each message means unless the sender is being intentionally obscure. Dave's an idiot for his initial post, I'm an idiot for responding and you're all idiots for carrying on for nearly 20 messages about utter pedantry. Regards, -Benjamin On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 12:45, <karlvonl@xxxxxxx> wrote: > Joshua Kronengold wrote: >>"Usenet style" is the standard for this list > > Is it? I couldn't find any mention of this on the policy page for this list (http://lists.looneylabs.com/listinfo/rabbits_policy.html). > > The closest I could find was "Reduce quoting and keep signatures lines to a reasonable length". One could top-post and still reduce quoting. > >> (and most other >>conversational mailing lists, and Usenet, and, historically, the >>standard conversational style for Internet email prior to the >>commercial services like AOL jumping into the pool) > > Perhaps, but this is not Usenet. Nor is it 1994. And I doubt these "other conversational mailing lists" have much more success in preventing people from top-posting, unless they have heavy-handed moderation in place. Times change, conventions change. > >> you don't use >>top posting on a list whose conversational style is threaded and >>quoted. > > How do you determine the list's proper conversational style? Absent a mandate in the list's official policy statement, I would argue it would be determined by common convention. So if most replies on the list are top-posted, then top-posing is the standard for the list.