[ale] OT: top-posting

[George Carless]

I agree... and frankly (since flames were requested), I think it's 
fairly obnoxious to be sending people lengthy, and frankly 
non-scientific and dated, information to try to convince them of the 
error of their ways in this regard--it's the kind of attitude that gives 
us a reputation of being elitists who're far-removed from the real 
world.

Shamelessly top-posting,
George

Jeff 
Lightner 
(jlightner at water.com) 
wrote the following on Wed, Jan 07, 2009 at 12:35:24PM -0500:
> "customary"
> 
> There is no "customary" way to do it - simply someone's opinion they are
> trying to assert as "customary".  I'd argue that far more people do top
> posting than any other method so you might say top posting was
> "customary".
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
> George L. Allen
> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 11:52 AM
> To: ale at ale.org
> Subject: Re: [ale] OT: top-posting
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jan 07, 2009 at 11:21:33AM -0500, Derrick Norris wrote:
> > The best posting method IMO especially when several people are 
> > contributing to a discussion is to embed comments into appropriate
> spots 
> > in the previous posts.  And of course the worst is when you have a mix
> 
> > of top-posters and bottom-posters.
> 
> I think bottom-posting is best when you're replying to specifics within
> a
> message. As Derrick mentioned above - as described by
> http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html --- "In addition to
> bottom-posting,
> it is customary to leave out non-relevant parts of the message with
> regard
> to the reply, and to put the reply directly beneath the quoted relevant
> parts."
> 
> As I remember, this was the common usage on newsgroups - not to include
> the
> entire previous message and 'bottom post,' but rather to bottom post to
> specific parts, or to 'in-line' post. Then again, newsgroups all nearly
> always read with a reader that knows how to thread messages sanely.
> 
> Outlook won't thread worth a flip - I much prefer mutt.
> 
> Anyway - I think most people now days just hit Reply and type, leaving
> the
> old message in its entirety rather than summarizing. This may be a
> result
> of mail-threading being broken on non *nix clients - or usage patterns
> developed by Outlook. Either way - when in Outlook - top posting is fine
> -
> so I don't have to scroll.
> 
> When in mutt - either is fine - except if 'bottom-posting' I'd prefer
> the
> previous message is cut-down to quotes or summarized so I don't have to
> scroll through 5 pages of text that I already saw in the last message to
> hunt for a reply.
> 
> Bottom posting is probably better for discussion - newsgroups or usenet,
> while
> topposting is quick-and-lazy for two-way conversation.
> 
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