[NTLUG:Discuss] list etiquette

[Allen Flick]

Yes, Jeff, we are in the minority because someone, way back when, said
the bottom posting is preferable because of blah, blah, blah.  It's like
religion and politics.  Like which text editor is the best.  Much too much
<opinion>  involved.  But ......

The number one reason I prefer the top posting technique is that there
are many, many, folks who will respond with very short comments like
"Yeah, man, I agree!"  When those are added to the bottom it becomes
an irritation to scroll all the way to the bottom to see it.

Also, there's the aspect of emailers that keep the header information,
like my sister's, so when one responds or forwards and doesn't
remove the previous headers it just adds to the length and confusion
of the response one must scroll past to get to the meat of the posting
or email.

IF one comes into the discussion late, or wants to archive it for future
reference, or gets an email or posting after forgetting what's being
discussed, then reading the postings from the bottom up is not that
big of an irritation.  Those incidents just mentioned are in the minority

Bottom posting, to me, is like changing the header into a trailer, causing
me to scroll to the bottom to see the Subj line and who the message is
from.  Many times that's all I look at before I click on the [delete]
button.

Jeff Demel wrote:

> Personally, I prefer top posting for a couple reasons.
>
> One, it seems to make more logical sense.  For example, my email inbox
> displays new messages on top and the progressively older messages as it goes
> down.  I don't have to guess the sequence of messages or look at the time
> stamp, I know which came in first and which came in last.  For me, the body
> of the email makes more logical sense if written in the same way.  If I'm
> following a thread that is top posting, I've already read the messages
> below, so all I have to do is read the new one, right there on top.  If I
> come in to the thread later, then all I have to do is start from the bottom
> and work my way up or start from the first post and read each in sequence
> (if the original messages have been removed).
>
> And second, bottom and in-line posting can get way out of hand and
> confusing.  How irritating is it to have to scroll down and try to figure
> out which part is the new message and which is the old?  Especially when
> email clients can quote out original messages differently.  Is it set off by
> tabs?  Is it set off by greater than (>)?  Is it set of by anything?  When
> it's re-posted, does the client add another greater than sign or tab,
> pushing the text farther and farther right, until it starts breaking the
> lines at odd intervals?  And which is which?  And what if each e-mail client
> is doing something different?  And it is so irritating how easy it is to
> confuse authors when someone uses in-line posting.  Usually, the first time
> it's done in a thread it's easy to follow.  However, if it's done again or
> three times or four times...  Damn that gets confusing.  And most folks
> aren't careful enough to go through and credit each instance with author and
> date stamp.
>
> That's just my $.02, and probably an extremely minority opinion, I know.
>
> -Jeff
>
> _______________________________________________
> https://ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss