Re: Top posting vs Bottom posting

[Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net>]

On 2009-03-22 11:52, Christofer C. Bell wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 11:40 AM, Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > On 2009-03-22 11:45, Chris Bannister wrote:
> >
> > > Bottom posting of course is just as bad or worse than top posting.
> > The only person who can say that with a straight face is one who has spent
> > too much time using Windows.
> >
> >
> > A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
> > Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
> > A: Top-posting.
> > Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
>
>
>
> This isn't true.  Come enter the 21st Century, it started nearly a decade
> ago. ;-)  Top posting works well in a modern threaded mail reader (all of
> which, incidentally, support HTML email).  Because *you* are a curmudgeon
> doesn't mean everyone else has to be. ;-)

I'm proud to be a middle-aged hater of gmail, Outlook, file managers 
and over-reliance on GUIs, and lover of OpenVMS, bash, xnethack and 
apt-get.

> Your example looks like this in a threaded mail reader:
>
> Mail 1: Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
> Mail 2: A: Top-posting.
> Mail 3: Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
> Mail 4: A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read
> text.

Having used a threaded MUA for 15 years, I can confidently say that 
no MUA reorganizes posts.

> It looks no different than a discussion forum or other normal conversation.
>  In fact, reading bottom-posted threads in a *modern mail reader* is
> annoying as it forces the reader to display a bunch of extraneous
> unnecessary text (the quoted material).  I just read it in the previous
> post, I don't need to see it again.

Emails, unlike web forum posts, tend to get deleted.  Thus, 
retaining context is useful.  Another reason to retain context: even 
for people who retain all their email, long multi-branched threads 
can make it hard to find a post's parent.

> I bottom-post out of force of habit, however, it's archaic and generally
> unnecessary.

--
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

"Freedom is not a license for anarchy."