Tracy,
That's an easy argument... question then answer. But I am running
larger windows than most (my mail client is maximized on one of the two
24" Wide-screens at 1920x1200, and I'd spend my day scrolling if
everyone did it "Question then Answer" / Bottom Post. Thankfully, it's
only the anally pedantic or those that learned the habit from the anally
pedantic that actually do that in every email.
The interesting thing is that this list, more than most, is more of a
long conversation than a "Question then Answer". It makes more sense
here than anywhere to TOP post. If you need to refer to what was
previously said, then scroll. Only those that are not paying attention
to the thread need to scroll. The rest of us can just read the input
from the poster without having to wade through what has been previously
said, quoted, re-quoted, rehashed, etc.
It's interesting that in general the ones that are the most anal about
the top/bottom posting thing are bottom posters and the more upset they
get about it, the more they seem to think of themselves. I would think
that a highly attentive and intelligent person would not want to wade
through redundancy to get to the new data ! After all, they are also
usually the ones that get the most upset about threading, which is
useful to see how the messages are related to each other and an easy way
to go back in history of related messages.
I think the "bottom post" thing is arcane. It's from a day when mail
was read in text only MUAs, and scrolling was not so easy as a flick of
the finger on a mouse wheel and mailing lists may have been much less
active and email was not as prevalent or as closely monitored by people
as critical communication. We can flash back to those days, or hang on
to them if that's what you want to do.... does anyone have the latest
hosts file ? Oh... that's right, we have DNS now.
I'll bet that 95% of email users top post. I know that doesn't mean
it's right, but perhaps you can find it just as logical that the quote
is a reference, not a preamble or prerequisite to reading the new
content, as you find the "Question then Answer" logic.
Tyrion, top posting didn't become a no-no. Bottom posting was first.
Top posting evolved out of convenience, and that many graphical MUAs
defaulted to it, and those that still cling to bottom posting only under
penalty of death, well, they didn't evolve.
Respectfully,
Mike
On Fri, 2008-04-18 at 00:39 -0700, Tracy R Reed wrote:
> Tyrion wrote:
> > When did top-posting become such a big No-No? I would rather see the
> > response at the top than have to scroll down to see it, so I don't get it.
>
> Since forever. You shouldn't have to scroll down to read this reply. If
> you do your email window is FAR too small. Question first. Then answer.
> That's the standard way it has always worked. Your question goes up
> there, my answer goes down here. It puts the discussion in chronological
> order. Trimming and making the discussion easy to read by posting in the
> right order is just simple courtesy and respect for the reader.
>
> --
> Tracy R Reed Read my blog at http://ultraviolet.org
> Key fingerprint = D4A8 4860 535C ABF8 BA97 25A6 F4F2 1829 9615 02AD
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>
>
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