[cctalk] Re: TOP POSTING

[Eric Christopherson]

On Sat, Dec 12, 2015, Mike wrote:
> The one question I do have for the older gentlemen on here is what in the world did the computers without a screen to look at do? Now I know about the tape, cassette tape's and even the paper with the hole punches in them but what kind of applications were they use for? Mathematics or? ? ?

Mike, here's another piece of mailing list netiquette that I think has
been mentioned recently but only briefly: when you start a new topic,
please do so by sending a brand-new email to cctalk at classiccmp.org
instead of replying to an existing message. Your question about what
earlier computers were like was a good one that brought up some
interesting responses, but I fear those messages got ignored by people
because they were still shown as replies to this neverending top posting
thread (most of which anyone would be 100% justified in throwing in the
trash without reading).

Sending a new email to start threads not only gives you a good chance to
write a subject line that actually describes what you're saying, but it
causes decent mail clients to not link the message with earlier ones on
another topic. Different email readers do that in different ways -- some
just treat any messages with the same subject line as a thread, while
some (like mutt, which I use) are happy to ignore subject lines and just
go by the reference field in the emails' headers (a field which is often
hidden from view).

So, by all means, start new discussions. But make sure they're treated
as new by emailing cctalk at classiccmp.org directly instead of replying.

-- 
        Eric Christopherson