Re: [gentoo-user] Hard to find netiquette, enculturation bug. (Was: Re: [gentoo-user] GNOME: Cant logout and Lock Screen is showing different background from GNOME screensaver)

[Mark David Dumlao]

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 9:34 AM, Eric Martin <freak4uxxx@×××××.com> wrote:
> I've seen plenty of emails going around requesting people not top-post
> and not to post via html.  I don't think it's as big of a problem as
> this thread makes it out to be.  While I'm sure some people do ignore
> posts that fall into those categories, there's not really much you or I
> can do about it.
I don't like defeatist attitudes just because they're related to
community changes. There are certain parts of the community that can
be readily improved (typically relating to centralized rules, FAQs,
etc) and certain parts that are very difficult to improve (typically
relating to the users' attitudes).

If someone makes even a passing note of this on the website, then my
single bug report might do the work of several dozen "dont post in
html" mails over time.

> Do you honestly believe that people who ignore html emails are doing
> something different than you for ignoring any post you don't care
> about?  That argument can be easily silenced when you realize that some
> people "don't care" for html formatted email.
That's a pretty easy question to answer and substantiate. Yes. Posts
are typically discriminated upon based on their content. On the other
hand, html posts are discriminated based upon their formatting. This
means questions that people would otherwise have answered get ignored.
Content discrimination is a null transaction. Formatting
discrimination is at some times a null transaction and at some times
negative (friction).