[ale] Ultra cheap tablet discussion. Are they useful or can they be made useful?

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 30 Jun 2020 20:23:20 -0400
Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:

> If everyone top posts, the topic is just a short scroll down. If
> everyone bottom posts, we all have to scroll through weeks of banter
> to find the new nugget of info.

Not true. If people also trim quoted material not relevant
to their reply, scrolling would be short. For a group of people trying
to distill the best of their ideas, interleave posting with removal of
irrelevant quoting is best. Terse replies can be given, and everybody
knows what question is being answered, and who asked that question.

You speak of scrolling through weeks of banter. When somebody top posts
with "I agree", if you want to find out what they agree with, and which
of that person's ideas they agree with, you'd need to not only scroll
through weeks of banter, but you'd have to critically examine weeks of
banter.

And like you said, top or bottom post, why should there be weeks of
posts? Trimming is a good thing.

Like I said in my email, if you want to top-post, fine, but be
responsible for identifying what you're talking about, and substitute
specifics for pronouns. We already have enough ambiguity in our
technical lives without a top post response of "I'd also use fstrim"
to weeks of posts. I mean, really, what does "also" refer to?
 
SteveT

Steve Litt 
May 2020 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques
     of the Successful Technologist
http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques