On Sep 20, 2010, at 7:20 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote: > One of the problems I have seen emerge on many IETF mailing lists is the habit of fisking. Please clarify what you mean by fisking. > By fisking I mean responding to a post line by line *while reading it for the first time*. Thanks. And why is this a bad thing, in your view? > I seem to be reading an increasing number of posts on various lists where it is very clear to me that the poster did not bother to read the entire message before starting their reply. Perhaps they're just very busy people? Are you too ignorant to have thought of that? > In particular I have read rather a lot of people starting off by accusing their opponent of being ignorant of issues that their opponent actually states only a few paragraphs further on. Reading ahead is hard, you can't expect everyone to do it. Many of us are too busy and important to take the time to compose a message carefully, so it makes sense to require everyone else to take longer to read our messages. > Traditionally, top-posting (or bottom posting) has been discouraged in favor of responding line by line. I think it is time to reverse that preference. You can't tell me what to do; that's what the Nazis did. You suck. > In particular I find that arguments are often less combative and somewhat shorter Is that a crack about my height? I dare you to say it to my face at the next IETF. > in mediums where people are forced to restate the issue they are objecting to in their own words. In all seriousness, forcing any particular approach is the real issue. I can't imagine how it would be accomplished. What I'd really like to force people to do is be more thoughtful and restrained; if they did that, it wouldn't much matter what approach they took to replies. -- Nathaniel PS for the humor impaired -- only my last paragraph was intended to be serious. -- nsb _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf