On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 11:52 AM, Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 11:47 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > > > But why is top posting a problem? Its an archaic and arbitrary dictum that > > is largely meaningless today. > > Groan. Not this again. There are very good reasons for NOT > top-posting, to do with the way humans process information, as well as > having the courtesy to not append enormous amounts of cognitive junk > to your postings.
In my previous avatar as a mailing list moderator, I was fairly zealous about slapping down top posters. I don't give a damn anymore. It's too late to get people to change, the genie is well and truly out of _that_ bottle. In the same way that my understanding of the word 'hacker' is now obsolete, bottom posting, good reasons or not, is too. This is especially demonstrated by looking at Twitter or Facebook -- posts are in reverse chronological order despite the fact that the other way makes more sense. People's expectations have been set and not meeting them just makes them nervous and reluctant to join the party. It's like wondering which fork to use in a formal dinner. That especially bothers me. This list has lost its former energy. Where are the vigourous arguments of old? In the past a good percentage of my interesting reading came from this list, now very little does. Even Shiv has stopped trolling. :-) Why wasn't there a single post about the treatment of women in India, the death penalty and the other staples of conversation in India in the past few weeks? I suspect this is largely due to it being the same people in all the conversations. I'd politely suggest that we should stop pandering to a few old timers like Udhay, Eugen and I and soften the rule to "Bottom posting is preferred but not required on this list" if that gets a few of the lurkers posting. -- b
