On 15 March 2016 at 23:44, William Park <[email protected]> wrote: > If you're replying to the whole email, or need to maintain chronological > order (such as following up on your own post with "Oh, by the way..."), > then top post. Like I'm doing here. > > On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 04:02:34PM -0400, Alvin Starr wrote: >> >> Hugh Redelmeier posted a message to the list about my posting replies at the >> top of messages. >> >> We have had a bit of a discussion offline about this but Hugh suggested we >> take it back to the list and see what the feelings of others are. >> >> My position is that posting at the top is most efficient and the easiest for >> the reader.
Of those who've responded to this thread, we seem to be pretty evenly split. I really don't care whether you top- or bottom-post - but I'm in favour of trimming and would love to have consistency so I know where I'm going to find responses. I'm bottom-posting because that's the official rule on this list (and it doesn't work well because now we're non-sequential after William's top-post ... thus the desire for consistency). Sometimes interspersed makes sense as you respond to separate points. But here's the problem: people are going to do whatever the hell they want, and/or whatever's the most convenient. GMail, one of the largest email providers in the world, assumes you're going to top-post and NOT trim, so that's what it's easiest to do if you're using GMail. I have to fight it to do it this way - I'm okay with that, but a lot of people won't bother, and should they really have to? So what are you going to do about it? Apply a three-strikes-you're-out rule? I don't think so: booting people from the list over top-/bottom-/interspersed is way too Draconian, and long arguments (which I admit I'm only adding to) over which it should be still won't stop people doing what they want unless you apply ridiculously over-the-top policing. So ... My suggestion is to let it go. Make bottom-posting "recommended" and just accept that we live in an imperfect world. -- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ [email protected] --- Talk Mailing List [email protected] https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
