[plug] Top posting?

[Jeffrey Lim]

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 16:44:52 +0800, Senectus . <senectus at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>  Ouch.. Hope that wasn't directed at me :-P
> 

no idea. :P
i think so long as u <gasp! 'u' instead of 'you' :P> attempt (with due
effort) to make proper contributions to the list, you shouldnt have to
worry about things like this... I'm not saying of course, that Onno
directed this at you.


> I really opened the wound on this question..

hey - but i think it was a worthy (and interesting) discussion. I'd
say my eyes have been opened to many alternative perspectives.


> Personally I think top posting is a better solution.
> It makes sense to me that you open an e-mail and read right at the top
> (where its convenient) the latest update on whats been written. If I
> don't understand what its about I'll then scroll down and read what
> was said before.
> 

provided, of course, that the quoted text at the bottom _~can~ be read
coherently and logically in and of itself_. If not, try to find
previous emails in the thread, read ad infinitum - skipping over other
people's bad quoting habits, other people's email styles (top-posting,
bottom-posting...)...


> I find it annoying, tedious and a waste of time to have to scroll past
> old text that, because in most cases I've already been following the
> story and know the history of this thread.
> 

i understand ur concerns - but of course, this is only good for
"short", and "directed" emails. Emails with only 1, or 2 points, that
u can "get" immediately, and because of the way u have been following
the thread, know which points in the previous email they are directed
at.


> One flaw I see in the Gmail though is that, because it automatically
> hides old text/repeated conversations from e-mails in a thread, it can
> be easy to reply to an e-mail and forget you have 100k of old e-mail
> text below your posting that your going to resend.
> That quickly becomes cumulative if nobody thinks to "Snip" it.
> 

hopefully, u shouldnt have to worry too much about that - the moment
you hit "reply", all of that stuff comes out.


> Along side the feature request for a "Button" for "reply top
> post"/"reply bottom post" or a "preferences setting for your standard
> reply" I'm going to request a button for "reply without history"
> 

really, ultimately, the buck has to stop at the person behind the
email client. If the person has no concept of good email etiquette...
no matter how fantastic the interface, there's still gonna be ways
that the person is going to mess up the thing for you. And then we
would have the problem of ~other~ email clients as well (we wouldnt
want everybody to start using gmail now, would we? ;))

>
>

ok - now try to duplicate what i've done in this email (taking your
points, replying to them one by one...) using top-posting only. Can't
be done, can it? Well it can, but.. wouldnt be the best (or most
efficient) use of our bytes, would it?

and so i guess perhaps it is a matter of writing style (or more
accurately "email-style"). Even for top-posting, i think people should
really just "trim it" - if at all possible. But then, this begs a lot
of questions all over again... (like why not cut out entirely, why not
"summarize" the quoted text below, yada yada yada...)

(perhaps i should call "this" style as evidenced in this email
"middle-posting".... What do u think? :P)

-jf