On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 01:10:37PM -0500, Patrick Shanahan wrote: > > Ignorant, disrespectful and inconsiderate is the top poster who quotes > 5000 lines including sigs and trailers and irrelevant/unenforcable > disclaimers *and* the bottom poster who does the same and adds a single > line (or more) of comment which probably ends up being a "me 2" or not > even pertaining to the subject.
Your preferences don't apply everywhere. In most of the (many) places I've worked, top-posting is the normal, and preferred practice. That way, you can quickly see what someone has added to the conversation without wading through quoted material. Some mail readers (GMail, among others) actually show a short preview in the list of messages, so top-posting is useful in that context as well. Similarly, quoting the entire thread is preferred, so you can refer back to earlier parts of the discussion without having to dig up older messages. Certainly sigs serve no purpose here, but it's too much work to find and excise them all. Most workplaces are using email to communicate, and they want maximum efficiency in that. Users want a way to get a message across quickly, as opposed to trying to create a beautiful and literate archive. -pd
