Re: Poster to this lists email address not obfuscated? If so it makes this list a heaven for spam bots...:-(
On 3/18/06, kamaraju kusumanchi <raju.mailinglists@gmail.com> wrote:
[Q: what's wrong with Gmail?]
> For starters, it encourages the use of top posting by placing the cursor
> at the begining of the message instead of placing the cursor at the end
> of the message - like thunderbird does. Ideally they can give an option
> for the user to choose where to place the cursor.
I agree with almost everything you wrote (despite the fact that I use
Gmail). I just wanted to comment on this.
While I agree that top-posting is Evil, there *is* a benefit to
placing the cursor at the top of the message. Namely, it allows you
to follow the flow of the message, interspersing your responses with
the relevant quotes. Strict bottom-posting is (in my opinion, of
course) almost as bad as top-posting, at least for long messages,
since you lose the context for point-by-point responses. I find that
when the cursor is placed at the bottom of the quoted text, the first
thing I have to do is jump back up to the top.
The people who top-post their responses when the cursor is placed
before the quote are probably the same people who would strictly
bottom-post their responses when the cursor is placed after the quote.
That is, they type where the cursor is initially.
I'd also point out that quote-hiding can be a nice feature, especially
when people vastly over-quote the message to which they're responding.
--
Michael A. Marsh
http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~mmarsh
http://mamarsh.blogspot.com
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