I top post because as far as I ever understood it, the *quoted* part was only there as a gentle reminder to those of us with very poor memories; I generally leave only the last post (or rather the relevant parts of it - sometimes, as in this instance, it may be the whole of it if I consider it required) and then say what I want to say on the assumption that people *will* remember what has passed by earlier - and those that don't remember can always scroll down to remind themselves :-)
Other than by *every* correspondent quoting the *whole* of the accumulated messages, before adding their own part at the very bottom, there can never be a complete view of the thread without tracking back through previous postings anyway - especially should the thread have, as frequently happens, developed into several other sub-threads. This, of itself, would seem to destroy the common argument that bottom posting is *best* (or better) - unless, of course, people are viewing their messages in a 'thread' format (rather than in 'date' format) and can follow each sub-thread of the 'thread' back to the poor soul who dared to start the original thread :)) I use Thunderbird for my emails (which is in a Folder/Time format because most emails, and subscribed groups, seem to top post) but, just to cloud the issue entirely .. lol .., I then use 'Agent' (in Thread/Time format) for all my newsgroups - and bottom post there, after trimming those parts unnecessary for my response(s) of course; I guess this means I am probably still sitting on the fence, albeit leaning more towards top posting - but only because by far the greater majority of posts coming into me are 'top posted' <g>. Purely as an aside, I have often wondered whether the whole top/bottom posting argument is actually relevant today anyway - and just how much of the 'bottom posting' preference can be laid at the door of 'historical' and 'conservative' reasons (i.e. this is how it always has been done, I am used to it now and don't really wish to change.). I'm not saying this to provoke an argument (or discussion - the words are almost interchangeable in my book) - it is just a simple curiosity because, to my mind anyway, 'old' does not necessarily always equal 'better' :-) That said, if this group tells me to 'bottom post' then I'll happily do that - because I value it too much to wish to provoke dissent here. Maybe the group as a whole should consider opening a Poll - to determine the group member's preferences in a democratic manner, should the List Owners and Moderators be ambivalent about which way the group ought to post and there is some dissent rumbling away in the ranks?) :-))>> Trevor Steve Wood wrote: > So following this logic you say what you want to say then AFTER that you > repeat what everyone else has said previously? Surely to emulate > conversation we should remove the entire previous message (which I'd go > with in preference to top posting entire threads.) > > I don't get how it reduces bandwidth to post longer messages - except by > avoiding threads like this one every six months ;-) Having said that > this has been a great thread because it's brought a new word to my > vocabulary - skodafone. Love it :-) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
