On 6/23/06, RBW <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
It wasn't until I joined lists like this with "real" computer types that I ever bottom posted.
My very first multi-user online forum were bottom posters, and they weren't computer types at all, except to the extent that they knew how to use a newsreader.
But I wouldn't expect anyone beyond us tech savvy people to follow along with that kind of reasoning.
A year and a half ago or so, a UCSD/Grossmont English teacher friend of mine got her very first computer and signed online for the first time. She had been a complete technophobe with respect to computers. She thought that word processors, in and of themselves, totally trashed student writing and she had photocopied articles by others supporting her point. She's an extremely smart woman, and seems to focus her academic interest on an Aristotelian sub-field of language called rhetorics. From m-w.com: rhetoric 1 : the art of speaking or writing effectively: as a : the study of principles and rules of composition formulated by critics of ancient times b : the study of writing or speaking as a means of communication or persuasion Well, completely to my and others' shock, she was hooked on the computer thing. She dived right in and found much to love. She liked being able to email people she knew, and we had a (verbal, face-to-face) discussion about email one day. I was very surprised to learn that she had immediately come to the purposeful conclusion (everything about this woman is purposeful, she's very strong of mind) that "bottom posting" was better than the alternatives. She didn't call it bottom posting, of course, but she described it in detail. She and I agreed almost completely on the etiquette of quoting. (I say almost, because I think that it's okay to top post if you're only replying to the general gist, nothing specific, and she goes all the way and says bottom post always.) I generally hold her views and opinions very highly, and I was pleased in this case to see that she, a layperson to computing but definitely not to language, had corroborated my view. So, while bottom posting may be largely confined to geekdom, it's not purely a cultural phenomenon. The perceived advantages really do have a basis in reality, and if others don't see those advantages it's because they either aren't in the context in which those advantages exist, or they haven't put any thought into it.
Especially since unlike us where we have a conscious hold on each other for conformity and awareness, the average Joe views their online behavior (and falsely so) as entirely personal, entirely a matter of their own invention and entirely confidential, Outlook behavior modification not withstanding.
That's one of the best explanations I've seen, RBW. Sometimes it feels like top posters are living in a black void and they imagine the words of others as something that is fed to them from an uncaring and unconscious word generator. If they reply it's a lazy act of bottling up proto-thought-of-the-moment and spilling it into the keyboard. Once the thought is gone, it's out of mind. Flush the toilet and walk away. Another feeling I sometimes get is that the top poster considers their words as something to put on a pedestal, as if no reply is necessary or wanted. Quoting the specific thing you're replying to, and then putting your reply afterwards, is an implicit acknowledgement that your words don't exist in a vacuum, that you're having a conversation in which others matter. There's a give and take in which you sometimes agree and you sometimes don't, and the thoughts you have are inspired in part by what others think. Otherwise why bother conversing? [1] -todd [1] You could blog. Oh!! Score one for me. -- KPLUG-List@kernel-panic.org http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
