On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 09:59:22AM -0400, Jon Paris wrote: > I am not familiar with the term “top post” - I’m guessing you mean > that my reply came before your original message.
Yes, it means "post at the top". Hence, "top post". A: Because it messes up the order in which you read. Q: Why is that? A: Top posting. Q: What is the most annoying email practice? In these sorts of technical forums, email is a discussion between multiple parties, not just two, often in slow motion (sometimes replies may not come in for a week, or a month). Often, a single email will reply to anything up to a dozen or twenty individual points. Top posting works reasonably well for short replies answering one, maybe two brief points where the context is obvious. In technical discussions like we have here, that is rarely the case. People may be reading these emails on the archives years from now, in any order. Establishing context before answering the question makes sense. Without context, our answers may not make sense. Hence we quote the part we are replying to before we answer it: Q: What is the most annoying email practice? A: Top posting. Q: Why is that? A: Because it messes up the order in which you read. > My email does it that way because that is my preference - and for that > matter most people I do business with. I will however try to remember > that at least some people on this list don’t like it. Of course the > minute I change it somebody else will probably complain about that! What you do in your business emails is up to you, but in my experience (and YMMV) is that business emails are a wasteland of lazy and incompetent replies from people who barely bother to read your email before banging out the shortest top-posted response they can. Not that I'm bitter :-) If I had a dollar for every time I've asked a customer or supplier three questions, and they've answered the middle question and not the two others, I'd be a wealthy man. But maybe I've just been unlucky :-) But I digress. You may find this helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style -- Steve _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - [email protected] To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
