On Tue, 29 May 2007 14:12:07 +0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > An explaination why top-post is easier to read: > When I am viewing an e-mail, the reply is the main part of the message and > I usually quite aware of what the original post is. So I should be able to > see the reply when I open the message.
That sounds reasonable, until you think about it more realistically. A long-running thread may contain hundreds of messages spread over a period of several days, or even weeks. People are dipping in and out of the thread at all times, and they're reading other threads as well. It's just not possible to be aware of what the original post is in most cases. For example, your message is just one of 170 messages I have waiting to be read right now. When I read your message I may be able to work out what it's referring to after a while, but how am I supposed to know this right from the start with no context to go on? Remember, when you write your message the point you're replying to is fresh in your mind. When someone else reads your message it may be a couple of days since they read the one you responded to, so how are they going to know what you meant? > If the message is bottom post, I will have to scroll down and down to find > where the author really start to say something. If the reply starts on line > 1000 while the messages ends on line 2000 it will be quite difficult to > know line 1000 is the start of reply and I should read from that line. The problem there isn't the style of posting but the lack of trimming. Whether you top-post or bottom-post you should ALWAYS trim out any quoted material you don't need. Although many experienced Internet users complain about top-posting, often the real issue that bothers them is that top-posters almost invariably leave hundreds or thousands of unnecessary text dangling off the bottom of their message. The same attitude that says "the cursor's at the top so that's where I'll type" also says "the entire message is quoted so that's how it'll stay". > While for the top-post, I know the first line is the start of reply and I > can read the reply without any difficulty. In an active forum, threads > grown long quickly, with top-post, we focus on what the message saids and > waste no time. That depends how you read your messages. A little-known but extremely useful feature of many mail and news clients is single key read. It's a feature that allows you to use a single key both for paging down through each message and for moving on to the next message. It makes reading large numbers of messages a breeze and is also easy on the muscles. Top-posting completely ruins this, because you end up having to page down through the unnecessary trailing content left by the top-posters. It's possible to work around this by using different keystrokes for moving between messages and for scrolling messages, but that takes more effort and, if you have to read thousands of messages a day, puts a considerable and significant extra strain on the hands and wrists. (It really does make a difference. I used to find my hands ached after reading mail and news for an hour. Then I discovered single key read. Now I just leave my hand resting lightly on the space bar and a slight movement of my fingers is all I need to do the work.) In general, top-posters are often those who haven't examined all the features of their software to find out how to use it most efficiently. They just find something that does the job and stick with it. On a web-based board I use another user had constantly complained that the new board software was much slower to use than the old software, but that was because she was trying to use it in the first way that came to her. When I pointed out the "view new messages" feature that she'd missed she was instantly converted to the new software. She'd disliked the new software solely because she was using it inefficiently, and that's how most top-posters are: they prefer it not because it's best, but because it works best with the way they read mail. To use the inevitable car analogy, it's like someone learning to drive by trial and error and assuming that the turn indicators are a great way to signal "hello" to his friends, and then getting all defensive when told that's not what they're for and everyone would get on more efficiently if he'd use them properly. > Write top-post or bottom-post makes no difference for me, the problem is > that I found bottom-post is harder to read since I will have to skim all > "original messages" before I could read the actual reply. If you have to skim a lot of text then you should be complaining about people not trimming. If someone bottom-posts, leaves pages of lines before their own message, and those lines are not necessary in order to establish the context of their reply, then they're not trimming properly. The purpose of quoting is to establish context for the new message, not to provide a complete archive of the thread. (If someone _wants_ to read the entire thread they can look at other messages or consult an archive. Quoting is used merely so they don't _need_ to check other messages in order to understand the current one.) On one usenet group I use there are two posters who regularly get into childish and pointless fights. Both of them bottom-post and neither one trims their quotes, which means that in the end both are posting 500-line messages with one or two lines of insults at the end. Most regulars find their squabbles easy to recognise so nobody reads the messages anyway, but it does serve as an illustration that everyone should think carefully about what they quote, not simply leave the entire quoted message there because that's how the software sets up the response. > Well, since no one could convice another, I'll stick to the "community > rule". That's the wrong attitude. This is the Internet. You're supposed to insist that you know better than everyone else even if they've been using the Internet for decades, and you have loads of lurkers who support your point of view but they're all too scared of The Clique to speak up, and when you're in charge you'll Show Us All. That's the Internet Way. People aren't supposed to be reasonable. (Dammit, there's not even a single "!!!1!!1!" or a "LOLOL" in this thread. What's wrong with you people? Have I fallen into an alternate universe where there's intelligence on the Internet?) -- Matthew Winn
