top posting - like this, makes it much easier to read - I don't know about you, but when I get new stuff, I put it on top of the old stuff - if I want old stuff, I dig down. Bottom posting is for the convenience of the computer, whcih can just append to the file, not for the convenience of the reader. It's like reverse polish notation, but without the elegance.
there, your turn.....
It makes it easier to write. The reader doesn't know what specific question you answered. It is like humans talk. question - answer. Or do you answer before you got the question? :-)
A posting often has several aspects. It is broken down and every aspekt answered by its own. This is logical sorting, not chronological sorting. It also helps the reader to get in sync again.
LOL!
Top-posting is perverted RPN
Nick
Sometimes bottom posting makes sense, but other times top posting seems better.
I usually only read RCM once a day. Se I read more than one message of a thread at a time and would prefer to just read what is new in each post, rather than have to read down through all the stuff I have already read.
To take it to an extreme, consider what it would be like if no one ever edited out parts of the previous messages. With bottom posting ,you would have paragraphs from previous messages followed by something like " me too." With top posting you would read the " me too " and realize that you had all the pertinent information and skip on to the next message.
So I tend to top post and then in case it is not obvious of what I am replying to,include just the part of the previous message that the reader needs to realize what I am replying to. I figure that most of the people here can remember what I said long enough to corrolate it to what I quote. And that even more don't even need to read the quoted part to understand what I am saying.
In this case I am either top posting and not including any of the previous messages because I think none of it is necessary for you to follow my thoughts. Or I am bottom posting with none of the previous stuff included.
Dan
On Thu, 19 Oct 2006 23:50:36 -0700, with neither quill nor qualm, "William Noble" quickly quoth:
(top posting snipped for sanity)
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is it such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet?
Judging from my parents' house, the surrounding trees are the storm bracing. The house leans, hits a tree, bounces right back.
[snip]
I miss the good old days when you snipped and posted at the bottom. On most lists now, I pick and chose where to post.
On computer related lists where the members have been around a while, I always bottom post like God intended. ;)
For the most part, usenet conversations don't have enough content matter to spend too much time on formating.
Wes S
I disagree. If one is following the thread you know what question has been asked or answered. You also don't have to sort through multiple paragraphs of information to find out the response has gone off topic.
Jay Cups
Nick Müller wrote:
Wrong, It is people who bitch about it.
Wrong, It is people who bitch about it. jk
According to snipped-for-privacy@krl.org :
[ ... ]If bottom posting -- you should already have seen the quoted text in the process of posting, and trimmed what is not needed to give context to your contribution.
Top posting means that you (as a poster) are not reminded of how much is being quoted, so the motivation to trim excess quoting is missing.
Note that I bottom posted -- and trimmed out all but your (short) introdutctory paragraph and the paragraph to which I was replying. If I had been replying to multiple points, each reply would have followed the quoting of that paragraph or part of a paragraph.
Enjoy, DoN.
I found that reading a all top posted conversation is easy. It works well if there is a smooth flow of the conversation without having to constantly see what is being talked about. It was also beneficial, in fact, when things got long winded and some joker wanted to add his two or three points on top of the whole mess of previous stuff rather that pruning out the stuff he was not actually replying to.
It helps a lot that I have my settings so that the quoted material comes through in a font size small enough to be difficult to see, with the new material regular sized.
For the most part, the one that slows me right down is when someone fires a dozen or more small short statements into the quoted body at various points, as I find it has no flow and I have to keep rereading the quoted text to put tthe statements into context. PITA.
Now I mainly bottom post. It keeps some of the complaints down to a minimum. :-)
Cheers Trevor Jones
You are right if you are following _one_ thread a week. If you read many discussions a day, you are lost without propper quoting.
Nick
On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 19:09:57 -0700, with neither quill nor qualm, jk quickly quoth:
--top posting corrected--
No, it's the lazy, couthless assholes who do it.
=========================================================== Save the Endangered Bouillons from being cubed!
Your rapid, simplistic, descent into vulgarity, simply ranks you among the couthless.
Some people top post, some people bottom post, some people interleave, and there was one who side posted. THere are times for each style. Get over it and quit being a net nazi.
jk
Reductio ad Hitlerum. Godwin strikes again.
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