Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2005 23:08:43 -0500
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at wsfa.org>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Different subject now, you have been warned! [was: Re: [WSFA] Re: Has anyone read any good books lately?]
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

At 07:40 PM 3/27/05 -0800, Sam Pierce wrote:
>Top posting is the default with some mail programs, such as Google
>mail.

And Lookout!  If you are only going to reply once, as is often the case
with direct mail, that's ok.  On a mailing list, where you are likely to
get multiple replies by multiple people it sucks.  Particularly when some
top-post and some bottom post, and some intersperse...that's why the
intersperse method got to be the standard many years ago, with ">"
indenting to show who said what.  It's the most generally useful and
bottom-posting is just a special case of it anyway, so it covers two of the
three options...only eliminating the one that's inherently the most confusing.

I have to use Lookout! for work...and when it tries to format things for
top-posting I just edit them into proper format anyway.  Only takes a few
mouse clicks and it saves others the trouble of fixing my posts when they
reply to them.  Bill Gates should burn in hell (if such a place exists) for
bucking standards just to ghettoize his customers for easier preying upon.

>Gmail also threads the replies as long as the subject stays the same,
>and hides the quoted text to simplify the message.  If it has embedded
>replies those are often hidden as well, so the reader has to "unhide"
>the quoted text.

Ok, now I have a reason to hate Gmail, rather than as in the past where I
only had reasons not to use it myself.  Now it's in the same class as
"Lookout!" and "Lookout! Distress".

-- Mike B.
--
There is always a way.  The easy way is always mined.