Terry wrote: > I sometimes put that line in a reply to indicate that I'm top-posting > to preserve the flow of the discussion - in an attempt to not incite > a negative response. I usually follow the same method that the > previous message did. Otherwise, some reply data is above, and some > is below, and it destroys thought flow. And yes, Len, some of us > have such small pea-brains that we cannot ewasily follow out-of- > sequence up-and-down replies. > > If I'm the first to reply, I will bottom-post, but if I'm responding > to an earlier reply, I follow whatever the previous person did. >
I will say this is the most sensible response I have seen. However, if you DO trim appropriately, it really doesn't matter. Unless you are responding to something in the original post as well, why bother to include it? It really screws with those who get their message traffic in digest format, both because it needlessly increases the number of digests they get and because the digests the DO get are full of needlessly repeated information. This is less of an issue with Yahoo!, since they digest based on number of messages rather than digest size, but one should consider the effect one is having on others. > Nevermind that the Yahoo web interface automatically places the > cursor at the top for a reply (in addition to the reply header). > Nevermind that M$ mail (and most other mail programs) typically puts > replies at the top if you hit the reply button. Nevermind that blogs > do as well. Yet another example of M$ deliberately bypassing standards for their own reasons. Sort of like HTML and Rich text in email. A great way to force people to use your product instead of the competition. This is configurable in most mail clients, BTW, including M$. > Newest information at the top is easier to read for > western-society humans. > I disagree, and you contradict yourself further down. I'll respond more fully there. > Nevermind that the real world of working-class people almost always > top post in a work environment. When I was working, I virtually > NEVER saw replies at the bottom of emails. They were almost always > at the TOP, so you could read the most recent info first. But, I > guess a commercial, cost-sensitive environment is different than the Internet environment. This is largely due to the fact that in 'most work environments' they use M$ mail products, which default to top posting. Most people are too lazy to change it. And most people are smart enough to figure out what you are responding to whether you top post or not. > I usually don't read a newspaper article (or anything else) by > reading the LAST paragraph first. We are a top-down society. Len's > little message at the bottom of his message proves my point. It's > cute, but totally backwards to the way our society reads. Did it > make sense the first time you read it? I'll bet not. > Well lets see. This is a perfect example of why TOP POSTING is bad. You are, in fact, reading the LAST paragraph (the latest response) FIRST, before the rest. The fact that, as you mentioned earlier, that we are a "top down" society, argues for bottom posting rather than top posting. I personally HATE that blogs order things most recent at the top, it is completely backwards to the "normal" way things flow. yes, it is marginally more convenient to see whats new, and so on. But it is still backwards to the "top down" natural sort that our culture imposes. > Trimming is also less of an issue in the commercial world. In fact, > there are times where trimming is frowned upon, especially for legal > reasons in some cases. But, that's the commercial world of high- > speed connections, so I can see some reason to trim in the amateur > world. Yea, I know about trimming, and, I'm trying harder. The > above was NOT trimmed on purpose. > If there is a legal reason, then of course, there is justification. However, I have never heard of a legal reason to NOT trim. The only possible justification I could come up with is to preserve all of the message, however, if you received the message to which you are replying, (and how are you replying to a message which you did not receive?) then the message should be stored in the archive already for retrieval. Of course, IANAL. Not top posting, and trimming, trimming in particular, are conventions of simple courtesy. If you have a threading mail client, and all responses are properly related by the the headers (In-Reply-To) by your mail client, then top posting may not be as much of a problem. You probably also have a relatively high speed (but how do you define High Speed? My sister just got 'high speed' internet. 256k DSL. My cell phone is almost faster than that...actually it usually is because my cell phone's browser strips a lot of the cruft that Firefox/IE try to download. My work has a T1, which is actually slower than what I have at home.) high bandwidth connection. But what about people who don't have those things? Not everyone in the world has high speed internet of any variety. Some people DO pay by transferred bandwidth. Do those people not matter? Lots of companies appear to think so, forcing people into huge flash downloads to use their corporate sites. In fact, my own company, again does this. Here's an interesting irony: we can't go to our own web site, because the IT department blocks access to download the latest flash player, and even if we could, we can't install it, which is required to view the web site. You even notice that nobody on mailing lists get jumped on for trimming too much, or not top posting? If you are offended by the occasional reminder that it is the courteous (as well as proper) thing to do, then...well you know your options. </flame>
