W.Kenworthy wrote:
Lastly, top/bottom posting is a religion so you are unlikely to change
either groups opinion, but just cause angst.
[This is not meant as a flame, so please read this message to a
lighthearted tune, sipping a glass of wine in the comfort of your
favourite easy-chair :) -- and everyone else, please excuse this
message's total offtopicness]
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 on usenet and in e-mail?
Yeah, that one's a classic, but I think it quite nicely illustrates the
point. I agree with you that it is annoying to scroll through a whole 10
pages of quoted e-mail conversation just to find the two-line answer
hidden at the bottom, and that top-posting in this case would seem more
pleasant. But I think this is an indication that the poster could not be
bothered to actually quote the relevant passages that he is answering to
instead of just unnecessarily leaving the whole conversation in, which
other readers will have read previously anyway.
The purpose of a quote IMHO should be a short reminder to other readers
which part of the conversation you are referring to in order to prevent
misunderstandings, not a complete ISO-9000 compatible documentation of
the whole thing. When people include everything, they actually make it
harder to tell which part they are referring to.
So, I hope i haven't annoyed you too much with my ramblings. Maybe it's
best to think about the whole issue under the aspect of better
communication than some sort of holy "netiquette that must be strictly
adhered to lest burning in the depths of nethell be avoided". I really
do think that this is not a religious issue between textmode/graphical
clients (i use thunderbird myself) but that there are actually rational
arguments that can be made, and I hope you consider my post in this light.
Thanks,
Marco
Disclaimer in case anyone is going to call me on it:
Yes, I used to top-post myself till not so long ago (and also got
annoyed when people got righteous about it), as e-mails on this list
dating back a mere 3 months or more will illustrate...
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