Response to OT rant (was: [ale] Netscape 4 for Red Hat 8+)

[George Carless]

On Fri, 16 May 2003, Jason Day wrote:

> On Fri, May 16, 2003 at 03:48:29PM -0400, Fulton Green wrote:
> > <rant subject="OT">
> > Yeah, I know, I replied in "top-post" style.  What exactly were the
> > objections to this?
> > </rant>
>
> As I said before:
>
> A: Top posters.
> Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?

This is a rather silly way of looking at things, though, IMHO.  I think
that when one is replying to *specific* things then it's sensible and
useful to bottom-post; however, when one is providing a more general
reply, it's far more convenient -- and legible -- to top-post.  This
becomes increasingly true as people reply to other people's replies:
adhering to a strict doctrine of bottom-posting simply leads to a garbled
mess, especially when people use different mechanisms for quoting others'
emails, etc.

Top-posting also allows a nice stack view of a discussion, letting readers
see at-a-glance what the most recent thoughts on a subject are.

Of course, when one is replying directly to a particular statement I would
tend to agree that bottom-posting is the preferred method.  But then, I
also always try to snip redundant content -- although I don't generally
consider it necessary to mark it as "[snipped]" unless I'm taking
something out from the middle of a conversation, in which case context
needs to be preserved.

--George
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