Re: Top posting (a different point of view)
John Carline wrote:
> Personally, I don't care where an individual posts. But, it would make
> my reading/following of threads much easier if I didn't have to
> scroll down to the bottom of post after post in a long string just to
> read the one line added to the 200 I've already read.
And that's why "trimming" is also a recommended practice.
No need to quote 200 lines of irrelevant material; trim out the
unnecessary stuff. This is also a consideration towards those who have
to pay for their internet access per byte. Why are you forcing them to
spend their money on six copies of the same 7-line signature and 17-line
"disclaimer" (and don't even get me started on disclaimers) just to read
a one-line reply to a one-line question?
Regarding top-posting, that's fine in some situations, but in a
situation like an email list, it's not just you and one or two others
reading the material, and making sense of it because all of you can
remember the context. It may be that in six months someone is trying to
find an answer in the archives, and top-posted messages turn into
spaghetti code. Remember how all your programming classes and peers
reiterated over and over that spaghetti code is a bad thing? Same thing
in email threads, particularly in archives. Top-posting, and lack of
trimming, often results in an ugly mess.
--
Kent
Reply to: