Nicholas Wheeler wrote:
Wow, that was filled with a direct attack - and no reason as to *WHY* the
convention exists, and why you believe it's 'more right' than top posting.
Another thing one learns with experience on the net is to not be easily
offended or quick to assume an attack. My post contained no direct attack.
I thought that by now everyone had seen the reasons why top posting is
considered more right and why the convention exists but for those who
have not yet run across it during the years on the net: Top quoting
exists to make threading work and more efficient communication possible.
You aggressively trim leaving on the point you are replying to and then
post your response to that point. Repeat for each point you need to
address. Now when you read an email that several people have replied to
you can easily follow the chain of thought. This is especially important
in a debate and as we all know a lot of debating happens on the
Internet. It encourages a point-counterpoint style of discussion and
provides relevancy to each comment. It removes a lot of ambiguity as to
what I am referring to if I break up your original posting into several
sections and address each section. It is also more clear if I am
addressing a particular question of yours and I delete everything but
that question and then provide my reply below it.
I'm sorry, but your last e-mail just makes it seem that you're narrow minded
and quick to judge. I don't know how/why you correlate bottom-posting with
experience level. Tsk tsk :o) Oh, and, why do you think top posting looks
unprofessional? I'm not entirely sure, but directly insulting people seems a
bit more 'unprofessional' than top posting, if you see what I'm saying.
I correlate bottom-posting with experience level because there is a
direct correlation. Not only is there correlation but there is
causation. People who have been on the net a while have participated in
enough discussions (technical and otherwise) to see the benefits of
maintaining an organized thread of conversation. It looks unprofessional
because it is not a very efficient way to maintain a conversation over
several emails and those who are not aware of this information are less
effective communicators. Among other qualities which may vary by field I
consider ability to communicate to be one of the skills a professional
would have. A lot of people top quote because they consider it too much
trouble to trim and bottom quote. If a person can't even be bothered to
press a few extra keys to tidy up their reply to me what kind of
employee are they going to make? I have conducted many many job
interviews over the past few years trying to find good candidates and
one of the many things I have to look at are how a person does email
while setting up the interview. I can tell the recently converted to
Linux former (or still current) Windows jockeys who perhaps need some
more seasoning versus the real wizards who are going to know how to
efficiently solve real problems. If you look at the mailing lists where
the real wizards hang out you will see that they are bottom posting.
Occasionally you see a top post on these lists and I have noticed that
top posters tend to get fewer replies.
--
Tracy R Reed http://ultraviolet.org
A: Because we read from top to bottom, left to right
Q: Why should I start my reply below the quoted text
--
[email protected]
http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
