Re: Top posting (a different point of view)
I think that one of my personal strengths is my ability to objectively
listen to both sides of an argument. But as much as I try, I can't
understand bottom posters.
How are you reading lists? I use an email client (thunderbird). When I
read a thread, I start at the beginning. Sometimes interleaved posts
are useful if there are many points. Otherwise I have no problem
following a thread of top posts.
No one leaves the entire thread intact as one reply follows another. So
I think the argument of context is bogus. Sometimes you just have to
look back through the thread, but if you have been following the thread,
you just read the new posts and it doesn't matter if it is at the
beginning or the end. The new post is more important and therefore
should come first.
If you can scroll down to read a new post, why can't you scroll down to
find the context when you are confused? Why do you always want to
scroll down when you could just scroll down in the rare instance of
having missed something?
Bottoms are just trying to impose Victorian-esque social protocols on a
free-form medium. Give it up!
Olle Eriksson wrote:
On Friday 10 June 2005 17.46, Roger B.A. Klorese wrote:
Joe Potter wrote:
That, of course, is the main point you made. I put all this in the lap
of Bill Gates --- the miserable ass. He is never happy unless he is
destroying some standard and replacing it with crap of some kind.
Outlook does it this way not to be contrary, but for an obvious reason:
it works better for the people who use it.
If you're involved in a discussion, and you're tracking it all --
because if you don't you're fired -- you want to see the most
up-to-date addition to the discussion, and for the 5% of the time you
need reminding, you can scroll down. The immediate previous bit will
probably remind you, and if not, the bit before that, etc. It's much
more useful for that sort of discussion than bottom-posting. And I'm
not speaking as a Windows-brainwashed suit -- I've been using Unix
tools since 1984 and email since 1975.
More importantly, I think it would be difficult to use bottom-posting with
html mail or rtf text or whatever it is called. And while plain text is
better in most situations, I have to admit there are situations where
formatted text can be useful. For example, sometimes you want to include
an image at a certain position in the e-mail, underline, make text bold,
color a certain text, include links without cluttering the text with long
http addresses. I use that when I paste code snippets and colored code
diffs, include links to defect reports etc in my daily work. And I
suppose we shouldn't forget all the other non-technical people who want
to format their e-mails with background images and fancy type faces.
Anyway, finding a technical solution that allows that to be combined with
bottom-posting would probably be difficult to implement, although I would
love to see it. Sadly Lotus Notes doesn't seem to handle it very well,
same as Outlook and the like.
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Michael Z Daryabeygi
Database Applications Developer
Sligo Computer Services Co-op
www.sligowebworks.com
301.270.9673 x 304
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