Hi 41South, man those moderators are harsh!!!
Actually, the mods are just finding their feet at the moment on this new forum, so I trust you're not too upset at being told off! (Sounds like you aren't though...)
When an email is sent, everything you send (including all the previously quoted text, forwards, virus sigs, company sigs, legal warnings etc etc) will
ALL be posted on the forum in the
exact order you sent them. If you don't trim, or tidy up your post, the forum can look very very messy.
41south wrote:If you are replying to a forum discussion by email this appears to happen automatically.
Actually it is your email program that sets this. With most sensible email programs you can set it to reply 'under the previous text' (bottom posting) or at the top (top posting). You can always just click to move your cursor elsewhere though if you can't set the default.
It is almost a religion between computer people about the merits of top vs bottom posting... but on a forum, in order to line up the conversation properly, bottom posting is the only one that looks sensible - and that means if you are externally emailing the forum, you should really bottom post.
Another easy way to be sure,
is not bothering with quoting at all. When you receive an email, click reply, then
delete all the previous text before you type. That way there will be no untidy quoting, and remember in the forum all the previous posts line up nicely above yours.
41south wrote:I have replied back to the moderator asking that the software be fine tuned a little to reflect the above rule.
Unfortunately, to get email and a forum combined is a huge programming task, and the m2f plugin we have used is pretty good, but still has its limits. It really cannot convert a whole email into a perfect forum post - it is impossible. I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks though - I'd never have set up a forum if people couldn't use email with it.
You'll see the results of some of the untidy posts in this forum - they all come from external emails. This shows why posts need to be tidied.
By the way, nobody is going to be kicked off this forum for untidy posts - unless people really make no effort to keep the place tidy in the future. We also know that not everyone in the MX5 community are computer gurus... (most are more interested in driving than sitting by a PC!) so people will need a while to get used to the new system, and learn how it all works.
Thanks heaps for your post, and maybe I might try and put some examples or a help page somewhere in the future to help people understand why posts need to be tidied and bottom posting used.
cheers
I think the email software side of the forum as brilliant. For me it mixes the convenience of the email "list" with the great things a forum can provide. But I see now what you mean about it making the forum messy.