Re: Federal Rules of Evidence

["Mclaughlin, Kevin (mclaugkl)" <mclaugkl () UCMAIL UC EDU>]

Hi:

For us older folks I just ask that regardless of the approach (top/bottom) that you please, please, please do not trim 
too much off.  The older I get the less I seem to remember at times and I definitely need to be able to go back and 
refresh my memory about what your reply may be about - either by looking further down or up in the email message.  :-)  
 

for those in doubt ..... yes this was meant to be "mostly" humorous.

For those that are lucky enough to have a 3 day holiday - enjoy it and have a great extended weekend.


- Kevin


Kevin L. McLaughlin,  CISM, CISSP, GIAC-GSLC, CRISC, PMP, ITIL Master Certified
Assistant Vice President, Information Security & Special Projects
University of Cincinnati
513-556-9177
 
The University of Cincinnati is one of America's top public research institutions and the region's largest employer, 
with a student population of more than 41,000.




-----Original Message-----
From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Valdis 
Kletnieks
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 2:45 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Federal Rules of Evidence

On Fri, 02 Sep 2011 12:32:34 EDT, you said:

How far would the civil rights movement have gotten with that attitude?

Top-posting (especially without trimming extraneous stuff) ends up being like The Amazing Karnak - you're left 
wondering which of your three paragraphs this sentence is in fact not a direct reply to. More importantly, which 
paragraph was *my* previous paragraph an actual direct reply to?

> Not to get into a philosophical debate, but if a significant 
> demographic operate a certain way for whatever reason, perhaps you 
> should change your expectations rather than asking the entire group to 
> change on your behalf?

Sure, 40K and 2 small images may not be much, but  I'm sure that a number of mail admins would be singing a totally 
different tune if the same people who didn't bother trimming out two small images then also didn't bother to delete an 
8 megabyte movie file that was also attached when they sent their "<aol>me too</aol>".  And there's something to be 
said for being polite enough to trim out the intervening text.  Yes, sometimes an e-mail may get lenghty and require a 
long reply - but at this point this entire commentary is still around 60 lines or so - while some of the "me too" 
postings are now over 125 lines without even the benefit of '>' nesting markers.

What's wrong with this picture?

> Is a 40k email really a significant  issue in this day and age with 
> such things as streaming media?  Bandwidth and digital storage are 
> also many times what they were a decade or so ago.

Bottom-posting and trimming is a Good Idea, because if you reply to an e-mail that has 3 action items, and you 
bottom-post after the one you intend to address and trim the other two, the reader can immediately infer that you will 
do one of the three.  You stick a "I'll get right on this" on the top, and now the reader needs to send a *second* note 
to clarify which item(s) will be gotten right on.

In addition, *trimming* the text is a good idea *whether or not* you are top or bottom - because by trimming, you 
indicate that the trimmed material is not germane to your reply.  In the previous paragraph's example, even if you 
top-posted a "I'll get right on this", if you trimmed two action items, the reader can infer you're not planning to 
tackle those two.

>  I know 'Nix users  and other old schoolers have a post bottom creed 
> of plain text, but you are holding on to an ideal whose time has past.  
> I too pushed back on such things for countless years, but I learned 
> this is not something that can be "fixed".

And if you found *this* note hard to read, consider what would have happened if I had put *all* of my response at the 
top, not merely above the paragraph I was responding to...

I suppose if your e-mail universe consists of merely people doing +1s and "me toos" and other one-line commentary, it's 
hard to get the people to Do The Right Thing when their MUA causes them to Do The Wrong Thing by default. But that 
doesn't mean that those of us who are still trying to use e-mail for serious discussions shouldn't keep fighting for 
people to use conventions more suitable for said discussions.

PS: if Outlook had from the beginning done bottom-post and use ">" markers by default, would we even be *having* this 
discussion?  Too many people are conflating "what is actually best" with "what my tool does by default and I'm too 
busy/lazy/stupid to change it". Doing something due to user inertia is not the same thing as doing something because 
it's actually best.