Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 15:27:44 -0400
From: Steve Smith <sgs at aginc.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Quoting
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

Not really.  Chaos.
--
Steve Smith                                    sgs at aginc dot net
Agincourt Computing                            http://www.aginc.net
"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."

Paul Haggerty wrote:
> Which doesn't change the facts at all.  Top posting works just fine
> in the majority of situations. [As I said, as long as each post only has one line or so.  If you're doing that, you should probably be using IM (or the telephone!)]  The only time when it is a problem is
> when you are trying to read through a thread for the first time.
> If you've been following the thread, then you only need the last
> post (maybe two) to refresh your memory and the new material
> is the most important.  And therefore placing it at the top where
> people can read it helps everybody in the process.  Having new
> material constantly appended to the bottom of an increasing
> series of posts [as does having the beginning of the thread sink through the floor]just makes it more and more difficult to read the
> thread.  This can hardly be considered an optimal strategy since
> initial entry into a thread is the more rare circumstance..
>
> Of course if people would trim their posts to hold only the most
> relevant quoted material it wouldn't make make even less difference.
> But they don't.  And as long as they don't, bottom posting is, for
> me, a real pain in the butt.  In your case, you did trim the material
> (as did I) and so bottom- or top-posting is pretty much irrelevant.
>
> You have a point that trying to intersperse comments within
> a top-posted chain is a problem, but for the vast majority of
> posts, things are either entirely top-posted, or entirely bottom
> posted, so it's really not an issue.  [So what's the "right" way to comment on multiple parts of a top posted chain?  The way I'm using now seems to be the most common (although it worls better if you compoe in HTML).]And if you have to intersperse,
> then delete everything but chunk you're responding to and have
> at it.  When responding to interspersed comments, people
> automatically respond with interspersed responses as well
> (except for the "Me too" crowd, but they should be shot anyway.)
>
> I say again, in the vast majority of situation it makes no difference,
> so why the holy war? I don't yell at people for bottom posting
> (despite the fact that it can be really irritating), so why do people
> suddenly feel they have the right, if not duty, to correct my serious
> breech of civilized behavior!
>
> Top post when appropriate, bottom post when appropriate,
> intersperse when appropriate. [Then you have the problem of what is "appropriate"]
>
> And beheading to people who quote the entire bloody digest
> regardless of where they put their new material!
>
> Paul
>
> Steve Smith wrote:
>
>>Near as I can tell, top-posting was invented by Microsoft; whether in
>>ignorance (Microsoft seems to think that they invented the computer and
>>everything that goes with it) or as a deliberate incompatibility (like
>>backslashes for directory separators), I don't know.
>>
>>Top posting only works if you're using e-mail as a sort of instant
>>messenger, where each post is only a couple of lines.  If the mail is of
>>any length at all, it is impossible to tell what you're referring to in
>>the original post.  Interspersing replies to the quotes in a top-posted
>>message chain results in garble.
>>
>>And that doesn't even get in to what happens on a mailing list digest
>>when everybody top posts and nobody trims.  Been there, done that, no fun.
>>