mailing list netiquette (was: [automake] Dependency question with _LDADD)

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello,

guys, let's please cut this off at this point.  I don't like
top-posting, I don't like it if people don't trim their replies to
only quote what they address.  I spend very little time reading most
messages, and am very likely to just drop those that are sloppily
written, unreadable, un-understandable, deal with many essentially
separate topics at a time, don't adjust the Subject (to the point
that it's useless to look at).

I can't speak for others, but I suspect there are many more readers
here who prefer civilized, high-content, low-noise discussions.
Please remember that there are many readers here (we can't know but
it's certainly in the hundreds), and work you burden on them is
multiplied, so shifting the burden to the message writer is the
efficient thing to do.

For everyone who doesn't know what that all means, here are some
helpful links to read:
<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>,
<http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html>.

This thread, and some others, recently (I'm not trying to single out
anyone here), lack obvious signs that the authors have engaged in
searching the mail archives at
<http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.automake.general/> or
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/> for prior discussions;
this can lead to long-time readers of this list just ignoring the
threads, due to lack of new content.  On the positive side,
references to the manual are given in this thread (which is good!).

Cheers,
Ralf