Deepa Mohan wrote, [on 4/26/2008 6:24 AM]:
So...you techies...tell me....what IS so evil about this top posting
thing?
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
Lots more at [1].
Most of the reasons, of course, have been transformed by years of habit
into ingrained behaviour patterns, as Rishab indicated.
It may be appropriate to quote this bit from the wikipedia article on
manners [2]
In sociology, manners are the unenforced standards of conduct which show the actor to be
cultured, polite, and refined. They are like laws in that they codify or set a standard
for human behavior, but they are unlike laws in that there is no formal system for
punishing transgressions, other than social disapproval. They are a kind of norm. What is
considered "mannerly" is highly susceptible to change with time, geographical
location, social stratum, occasion, and other factors.
As for me, it is, in addition to the above, an objection based on the
slippery slope argument. It is all too easy to go from top-posting the
way Rishab did it (which I have no problem with); to quoting an entire
mailing list digest (which could contain a few dozen messages) and just
add a line on top -- which I have seen in the not-too-distant past on
silk as well -- which is just wasteful of bandwidth, and people's time.
The latter is the more scarce and more valuable commodity, though I
certainly didn't feel that way when I was downloading messages over a
quirky GPRS link onto my cellphone a couple of weeks ago.
Udhay
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_posting#Top-posting
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manners
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
