Top Posting, And Posting: Sort Of Like Waxing

(Erik Brooks) wrote
Then I'll disagree with Ken on this - it's not too hard to scroll down

I agree with Ken. I prefer to read a post where the previous post is
clipped down to the bare minimum just as a reference for your post.
Too many people respond and include the whole damn post, even if it's
pages long. All you need a one liner like above. If you include the
pages of text, then you're screwing people with a dial up connection.

Jay Wenner

On Sat, 01 May 2004 03:12:49 GMT, "Gary Jacobson"
wrote:

It's easier to follow from poster to
poster when top posting is used.

No.

JT

On 1 May 2004 08:49:36 -0700, (Erik Brooks) wrote:

Then I'll disagree with Ken on this - it's not too hard to scroll down
to see the text being responded to.

In writing for usenet, you have to consider that what you write is
being read by dozens or even hundreds or thousands of people. So the
question is, should you be lazy, top post, and not delete superfluous
stuff to save a few seconds. Considering that many, many other people
will have to scroll down to read the text being responded too, this
seems very bad to me. It's putting the burden on the readers.

If you are writing to one or perhaps just a few other people (such as
in email), then a reasonable argument could be made that you shouldn't
spend as much time to make your writing super easy to read, as their
is more of a one-to-one correspondence between your time and your
reader's time.

But in a one-to-may medium like usenet (and mailing lists) it's
selfish to not spend time to restructure your posts to save the many,
many readers a few seconds.

JT

On Sat, 01 May 2004 21:06:11 GMT, Gene Goldenfeld
wrote:

Part of netiquette is that groups can create their own etiquette. Most
groups I've participated in expect bottom posting. Most expect the post
being responded to, or the appropriate portions, to be quoted.


This "etiuquette" is not quite the same thing as, say, saying "God
bless you" after someone sneezes. There are reasons for it that arise
both out of bandwidth issues (less important today, but still valid
for some people) and also about the nature of writing and reading in a
one-to-many or many-to-many communications. In these sorts of
communications it behooves the writer to think of saving time for
many, many readers.

JT

Gary Jacobson wrote:

snip
Are we losing contributors because of our bad manners?

Nope.

We're just people. People from different countries, different
backgrounds, different schooling, different walks of life, with
different ideas and many posts are from people for whom the
English language is not their first language.

Isnt it wonderful
Mike

John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
On Sat, 01 May 2004 03:12:49 GMT, "Gary Jacobson"
wrote:


It's easier to follow from poster to
poster when top posting is used.


No.

JT


It is quicker to read messages with top posting if the mail reader
defaults to the top of the page, so I would agree that makes it better.
However,, the default of the mail reader seems to govern most of the
messages; this one being a bottom post because the reader is Mozilla
Thunderbird (free and excellent BTW). Previously I used Outlook Express
and the default was top posting.
Some newsgroups chastise you greatly for not bottom posting; I am glad
this one has such good manners!
gr

In article , Kenneth Salzberg wrote:
I disagree. If the text of the post to which you are responding is
necessary to the understanding of your reply, it needs to go first. If it
is not, it needs to be deleted (this was, of course, of much more
importance when most people had slow modem connections - it still is
important when there are folks out there with limited space for saving
their e-mail).

Also, lots of "dead quoted text" (especially when people seemingly
aren't aware that they're quoting 4-5 old, very long, messages just
because they didn't bother to look further than the "Me too."-reply)
makes reading mailing lists as digests a less than enjoyable experience.

Excessive quoting is bad, sensible quoting is good - then post the reply
whereever you want.

One of the variables here is that many of those rules of ediquitte
(which I could never spell correctly) have to do with e-mail
corrispondance, rather than net-news posting. Since many of us read the
ski posts by e-mail, those rules should be kept in mind.

I wasn't aware that it was that much of a difference between the
netiquette in e-mail and news communication - at least when it comes to
public communication like mailing lists and news groups. Maybe I'm a
very "dry" corresponder, but I do try to apply the "minimal relevant
quote"-system even in everyday chatty e-mails. It's just easier to
follow.


/Tomas

--
Caps and foobar are normally not parts of my address.