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Posted by Power's Mechanical on January 17, 2007, 4:55 pm
Steve Scott wrote:
> Sorry, Fish, I prefer it when people top post and plan on continuing.
>
> FWIW while it does happen, it's rare for people to jump in the middle
> of a thread. Most often the thread is familiar to both the
> participants and those following it. So the argument of top posting
> making posts incomprehensible is BS. Someone has arbitrarily decided
> bottom posting is the way to go. I have arbitrarily decided top
> posting makes more sense.
>
> BTW, I don't and won't use MS Outlook.
>
> Finally, my point was not about netiquette but rather making sure a
> quote is properly attributed. Sort of like someone attributing one of
> Paul's rants to you. Everyone wants credit for their own, not someone
> else's.
>
> In case you're interested here's another's take on top posting:
> "In the years that I have been following this debate and in which my
> own habits were formed, bottom-posters have relied on three arguments,
> two spoken and one unspoken.
>
> 1. People have bottom-posted from the beginning. It's tradition.
> It's the badge of my geekdom, the sign of my tribe.
>
> 2. Bottom-posting follows more naturally the conventions of a
> conversation or narrative. You get a more natural flow by
> bottom-posting.
>
> 3. (Unspoken). Microsoft's email clients encourage top-posting.
> Only by bottom-posting can we resist the ever-encroaching darkness.
>
> Only the second argument has enough substance to warrant a reply.
>
> I think that it has its origins in the early years of the Internet,
> when email was a new thing. "What's an email like?", people asked
> themselves. It's like a novel or a letter or the transcript of a
> conversation (e.g. Hansard, a legal transcript), they decided, in
> which the newest thing comes after what followed before. By analogy,
> new stuff belongs at the end. Bottom-posting is born.
>
> I don't find this argument convincing in theory or practice.
>
> In fact, the metaphor of email as letter or transcript sucks.
>
> Internet communication is more like a notice-board or the bits of
> paper on the front of your fridge. The most recent,
> currently-important stuff is on the top. Blogs understand this. They
> top-post. Discussion boards and forums understand this. News sites
> understand this. They have a better metaphor; they all top-post.
>
> In practice the situation is just as bad. Bottom-posting means
> scrolling down past inches of text that you already remember or don't
> need to know, in order to read the poster's contribution. The Mighty
> Mouse gets a good work-out, but it's a bad result for efficiency or
> sensible communication. Imagine burrowing down to the bottom of the
> pile of notes on your fridge to find the newest. Who would put up with
> that?
>
> What's more, it leads people to top post that there is a bottom post.
>
> All talk of metaphors to one side, top-posting is smarter in practice
> too. From a functional perspective, it is far more efficient to scroll
> down on the rare occasions when you need to double-check something
> than being forced to scroll down every time.
>
> It's polite. It's respectful of the reader's time and intelligence.
>
> It's just better."
>
> On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 15:12:17 GMT, gofish@gonefishin.net wrote:
>
> > Steve Scott wrote:
> >
> >>Dan, if you're going to trim a post you're replying to, please learn
> >>how to do it properly.
> >
> >
> >pot, kettle, black?
> >
> > Speaking of usenet etiquette, ya think you can learn how NOT TO TOP
> >POST ???
> >
> >I know, I've heard your argument before, ya cant think past MS
> >outlook..... :-)
>
>
> --
> Fall seven times, stand up eight
> --Japanese proverb
Well there you go Fish. SS is special and will continue to be a top
posting moron if he wants to.
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