While I do not agree with DarkMatter's use of insults, nor do I agree with his opinions on wiring lamps or on how Google works, he is correct this time.
As for "Ross Mac", life is too short to waste on people who choose to make their posts harder to reply to by top posting, so I am setting my killfile to filter out his posts and encourage others to do so as well. I have found that subset of top posters who, after being informed of the reasons why we prefer interspersed posting, still refuse to stop top posting seldom write anything worth reading.
Personally, I think it to be rather silly to choose not to associate with someone merely because they crack open their boiled eggs at the wrong end; childish is it not?
I guess this Guy Macon is a piece of work too....the old hit and run tactic....or should I say run and filter. Do a search on Guy and DarkMatter on Google groups and the true story will emerge.....I have come to find that the newsgroups, while very helpful, are sure full of whack jobs! take care, Ross
I'm with you Phil....bring on the killfile. I prefer to be there!.....like I could even possibly have an intelligent conversation with either!.....Take care, Ross
I am not sure whether your objection is to the use of URLs or to the use of pre-written material.
As for the use of pre-written material, some questions have come up so many times and in so many places that they are well covered by FAQ (Frequntly Asked Questions) files and there is no point in composing a post that expreesed poorly what the FAQ expresses well.
As for the use of URLs instead of quoting the material inline, there are good arguments for doing either. The URLs take up less room and can contain graphics. Posting inline is more convenient, especially for those who use offline newsreaders. Here is some material on this subjecft posted inline:
Why is Bottom-posting better than Top-posting Adapted from
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Anton Smit and H.W. de Haan
Definitions: Top-posting: Writing the message above the original text, when one replies to an email or a post in a newsgroup.
Bottom-posting: The opposite of top-posting. Now the new message is placed below the original text.
As Usenet-readers, we are often annoyed by people who keep top-posting. This is considered as not good 'Net etiquette'. The majority of Usenet-users prefer bottom-posting. Below you can find our arguments why bottom-posting is better than top-posting.
In addition to bottom-posting, it is customary to leave out non-relevant parts of the message with regard to the reply, and to put the reply directly beneath the quoted relevant parts.
[1] Because it is proper Usenet Etiquette. Check out the following URL:
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. It is a little outdated but still has a lot of valid points. Let us quote something from this site:
"If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just enough text of the original to give a context. This will make sure readers understand when they start to read your response. Since NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the postings from one host to another, it is possible to see a response to a message before seeing the original. Giving context helps everyone. But do not include the entire original!"
[2] We use a good news reader like Forte Agent. Good newsreaders like Agent put the signature by default at the end of the post, which is the Usenet convention. Microsoft Outlook Express however has some serious bugs. Let us quote someone we know:
"The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners." -Ernst Jan Plugge
We are programmers ourselves, and we know it is very easy to implement to put a signature at the end of the post instead of putting it directly above the post you are replying to and can not change the position. Forte Agent has as a feature that reply to a post it will remove the signature (recognizable by '-- ', note the extra space) and everything below it, so it will remove a part of the original message. This is good Usenet practice so Agent is not faulty. Outlook Express on the other hand is faulty, check this bugreport regarding the Usenet signature delimiter.
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If you want to try Agent, you can get it at
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[3] Top-posting makes posts incomprehensible. Firstly: In normal conversations, one does not answer to something that has not yet been said. So it is unclear to reply to the top, whilst the original message is at the bottom. Secondly: In western society a book is normally read from top to bottom. Top-posting forces one to stray from this convention: Reading some at the top, skipping to the bottom to read the question, and going back to the top to continue. This annoyance increases even more than linear with the number of top-posts in the message. If someone replies to a thread and you forgot what the thread was all about, or that thread was incomplete for some reasons, it will be quite tiresome to rapidly understand what the thread was all about, due to bad posting and irrelevant text which has not been removed.
[4] To prevent hideously long posts with a minimal account of new text, it is good Usenet practice to remove the non-relevant parts and optionally summarize the relevant parts of the original post, with regard to one's reply. Top-posting inevitably leads to long posts, because most top-posters leave the original message intact. All these long posts not only clutter up discussions, but they also clutter up the server space.
[5] Top-posting makes it hard for bottom-posters to reply to the relevant parts: it not possible to answer within the original message. Bottom-posting does not make top-posting any harder.
[6] Some people will argue that quoting looks bad due line wrapping. This can simply be dealt with by dropping Outlook Express as a start, and using only linewidths of 65 - 70 characters. Otherwise one has do it manually, and that can be tiresome.
[7] A reason given by stubborn top-posters: they don't like to scroll to read the new message. We like to disagree here, because we always have to scroll down to see the original message and after that to scroll back up, just to see to what they are replying to. As a result you have to scroll twice as much when reading a top-poster's message. As a counterargument they say (believe us they do): "You can check the previous message in the discussion". This is even more tiresome than scrolling and with the unreliable nature of Usenet (and even email is inevitably unreliable), the previous message in the discussion can be simply unavailable.
[8] Some newsgroups have strict conventions concerning posting in their charter. As an example we can tell you that in most Dutch newsgroups, you will be warned, killfiled or maybe even flamed, if you fail to follow Usenet conventions or if you do not quote according to the quoting guidelines. In general: it is better to practice the guidelines, if one does not want to get flamed in a newsgroup one just subscribed to.
We can conclude that there are no good reasons we know of for top-posting. The most top-posts originate from the minimal work people spend on making posts. We think that one should be proud of one's post, that is it contains relevant content, well-formed sentences and no irrelevant 'b*llsh*t', before uploading to your newsserver. If the majority of the group will adhere to this convention, the group will be nicer, tidier and easier to read.
As a final remark we want to bring non-quoting into mind. This means that the original content of an email or Usenet post is completely removed. It makes it very hard for a reader to find out to what and whom one is replying. This phenomenon can be partly attributed to wrong settings of news- and email-clients, and partly to people who want to start with clean replies.
Bottom vs. top posting and quotation style on Usenet
This document was originally written in response to the following question:
"Why don't people like "top posts"? I find it far more difficult to read a thread when people "bottom post". It means that I need to scroll virtually every message I want to read."
What is the reason to quote at all? Consider it. It shouldn't be to allow people to scroll down to see all earlier discussions. If the news client is a bit smart, fetching the older articles from the server should be just as easy as to "scroll down". If a thread goes forth and back some times and earlier quotes accumulate, an article including all those quotes might get five-ten times larger than a posting without quotes, this hugs bandwidth and hard disk space. Therefore, IMHO, no quotes are far better than a posting at the top of all old quotes.
At the other hand, it's very easy to loose the context in a posting without any quoting at all. Letting the reader understand the context is very important for easy reading. Therefore there should always be some few lines reminding the reader about what kind of discussion he is into.
If a person has to scroll down to read the new information, there are probably too much quotes in the article. A person that is good to use quotes never quotes more than some few lines at once. If I can't find the right lines to quote, I often replace all the quotes with a short summary of the discussion so far. Actually I can agree that it is more annoying when complete articles are quoted with a small "yes" or "no" at the bottom than to read a top-post.
There is also another very important aspect with quoting that shouldn't be underestimated; the quotes should tell what parts of an article you're replying to. Often you have some viewpoints about some parts of an article, and other viewpoints about other parts of it. The best way to solve that is to quote a little bit, come with some comments, quote some more, and then write some comments to that as well. This can't be done at all in a top-posting.
On Thu, 09 Oct 2003 02:22:53 GMT, "Ross Mac" Gave us:
Said the retard that knows exactly NIL about the subject.
Not only is your "trail" remark incorrect, their is NO trail as he and I are two entirely different people in entirely different geographical locations. Also... he is nice. I am a brash, in your face asshole. That still doesn't make you any less retarded about usenet.
On Thu, 9 Oct 2003 10:31:41 +0100, "Airy R. Bean" Gave us:
You're a goddamned retard, boy. Following those links IS the most economical method for the poster. You could not possibly be *THAT* retarded... Oh wait... yes you can. You are nothing more than a top posting usenet retard as well.
It's not hard to follow you DarkManure....your constant use of the words retard and dipshit, along with your ridiculous quest to end all top posting by insult sets you on an easy to identify island......grow up kid!
Like I said before...you are easy to track....your limited vocabulary and intelligence along with your sick little quest makes it a simple task. And as far as a different IP....yeah right....so you use another machine with another account....so don't try to impress me with that crap!
On can see replies to DarkMatter on Google, and if you do so you will find that I have always treated DarkMatter with respect. I believe that "Ross Mac" lacks skills in the use of Google and was fooled by certain posts from a "Wise Guy" who lives in Macon, GA. who had a run in with DarkMatter in sci.physics. I live in Los Angeles, CA.
That's a good point. If following a thread, then there's no need to revise as for an exam. The previously seen material is tedious to plough through.
If there are several points to which a reply is made, then it is sometimes better to reply to each in a separate post, otherwise the post goes over several pages. (This is one failing of the bottom-posting style, BTW, that you cannot easily sit on the "NEXT" button to work through a posting (Important if you take OOO 2000 postings per day) and must keep flitting between "NEXT" and "PAGE DOWN", a most inconsiderate aspect of the bottom-poster's behaviour)
Top, middle or bottom posting is just a question of personal preference. It's not something to bust a gut over. The top posters, unless put onto the defensive, do not get all silly and aggressive as do the bottom-posters.
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