From: "The Fool" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
It Destroys _All Context_ in a conversation.
Not necessarily. Though I prefer the interleaved style, at my work, the most common practice is top-posting, particularly in regards to things like cross-department email threads. The one big benefit I see is that frequently additional people get included in the discussion midway along, and it's often a lot easier to pick up the discussion by just reading the separate message bits bottom-top than it would be to decipher all the >>>>'s and snipped up paragraphs, where the original context might be entirely missing.
Also, I've found that a surprisingly large number of people seem to find the
nested >>>'s somewhat confusing, particularly if they're not the type to spend
time on message boards or USENET, etc, where this is common expected
practice.
It Inflates messages with unnecessary-unwanted commentary that isn't being replied to, as people who top-post don't delete the un-replied to portions of messages, which can be 20k, for a 1 line response. Some people still have to pay for their access, and you just cost them money by top posting. Messages also get stored on various computers, and so you are costing money in terms of storage space, that should have been unnecessary in the first place.
Bottom posters can be guilty of the same thing. It's not that uncommon to see
a full quoted email, with a one of two line comment at the bottom. I've seen
long threads of bottom posters where no one deletes anything, and you have to
scroll through 20K of text just to see anything new. To me, that's no better than
top-posting.
People do not read from the bottom up, and any newcomers that stumble in where there is top-posting will not understand the context of messages they come across, because the start of the message is at the bottom.
When interleaving comments, people frequently snip out parts of the quoted message they aren't concerned with, so the context is spotty in any case.
If you are too lazy to properly snip un-responded-to commentary then I am unwilling to engage in meaningful conversation with you, esp one that destroys context in every single damn message.
If everyone used top-posting, the context remains fully intact. So in a discussion
with a top poster, you must resort to being a top poster as well if you care about
preserving context. You will be assimilated...
What you should instead compare it to is Weblog Comments, which just so happen to follow what format?
I've seen some weblog comments and some message boards that have newest messages first.
Overall, I prefer the intralinear style, but it really isn't worth getting worked up over.
Many/most top posts are short comments that don't really need the full discussion
context if you're going to reply to it. If not, then go ahead and interleave your reply
anyway. No biggie.
-bryon
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