OldSarge wrote:
To ALL: First, I wish ALL guru's or othewise being an authority on all
of this, would get together on whether to top or bottom. I have had one
or more say they do not want to read through old information, but want
new on top, and, then I get those who say the convention is to post on
bottom! Well, it is obvious to me and to anyone who can read, that there
is NO CONVENTION that is generally accepted!
As with any convention, it only works if everyone follows it. The
convention on the road is to follow the speed limit, but if everyone
speeds, the convention breaks down. (Perhaps a bad analogy, because it
is a law, but it kind of works.)
Here is a good simple netiquette site:
<http://linux.sgms-centre.com/misc/netiquette.php>.
In general, if you look at the people that post the most you will see
they bottom post or in-line post. When I first started here, I was
admonished for top posting, so I started bottom posting, and it makes
sense most of the time.
However, there has to flexibility. The grips about having to scroll/read
through old information is valid, but this is where snipping become ever
so important. You can not just bottom post and be done with it.
Especially if you are going to reply "+1" to a 100 line e-mail. No one
like thats.
But, if you are commenting in line (That is to say after each point in
an e-mail) or if you snip the non-relevant things to your reply (as I
did this e-mail) and then bottom post, there is very little old
information to read through.
Basically, it all comes down to context and good user discretion, which
is where a lot of Internet conventions breakdown.
Personally, I prefer the bottom post because I like to refresh myself on
the conversation. This of course isn't true if the thread is fresh and I
haven't deleted all of the previous e-mails in the thread. But, if it
has been a day or two in a thread I didn't really care about, then I
like to have the old messages in there to catch me up.
In closing, the general convention on just about every netiquette page I
have read is that bottom posting is the way to go. One of the issues, is
that this is not Outlook's default (Outlook always put the cursor above
the quoted reply), nor is there an option to change this as in
Thunderbird. (There is a program call Outlook quote fix that works
pretty well to move the cursor if you are interested.)
HTH,
--
Peter Kupfer -- Using OOo since 'OO4 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Disclaimer: I am not a guru or an authority per se, just someone who has
been here for a little while.
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