[rescue] Top vs. Bottom posting (was: revived: TiBook G4 867...)

[John Floren]

On Fri, Apr 13, 2018 at 5:28 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 13 April 2018 at 13:05, Mark Benson <md.benson at gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
>> I found K9
>> clunky and poorly laid out UI-wise.
>
> Agreed.
>
<snip>
>
>> Frankly it's largely contextual for my 2 cents. If it's a long thread, lots
>> of points that need replying to such as you'd find in a mailing list, yes,
>> bottom posting is prettymuch required. As you say it's easier to follow. I
>> try to, even on my phone. I slip sometimes because of aforementioned lazy
>> habits. I think going as far as calling it rude and disruptive is a tad
>> strong, it's inconvenient for sure though, but in this modern age I've come
>> to accept it with a slight roll of the eyes and a sigh (especially when I
>> do it myself!!) :). Life's too short to push up my blood pressure over it.
>
> I wish I could agree but it still gets to me. :-(
>
>> If it's a one shot reply to something, usually between me and 1 other, I
>> tend not to bother. It's actually easier to quickly read replies like that
>> if it's the first thing in the mail, a valid point my boss made when I
>> asked him about it some years ago (he's a prettymuch died-in-the-wool top
>> poster). We've had cases where, when replying at the bottom of stuff,
>> customers have missed information. So, horses for courses as it were.
>
> I've met that too.
>
>> You may also notice I still sign my emails with a standard singature
>> delimiter '-- <cr><cr>' which makes them easier to trim off, and a
>> surprising number of clients still support that.
>
> I'd jolly well hope so, too! ;-)
>

One might ask if it was worth the edit to go through and snip and
in-line reply when the in-line replies are primarily "me too". One
could make the argument that you'd be better off top-posting a
coherent well-written summary along the lines of "I agree with your
points regarding K9 and Outlook. I've tried <email clients>, blah
blah, etc.". The advantages of this:

* It's clearer to read, because you lay out your points in full
paragraphs rather than split up among someone else's email
* It allows mail clients to condense or hide the original message
until you want to see it (gmail will condense the original message to
[...] *as long as you haven't gone through and inline replied*)
* Most email clients with a split summary / message display like
Thunderbird will start the message display at the top, and if you're
working your way through an email thread you've already got a bit of
context in your head so you just want to see people's *replies* right
away rather than scroll through crap you already read. The original
messages are down below if you want them.
* Inline replying breaks up the original message and makes it harder
to read. The original poster's 3 coherent paragraphs get separated
from each other by multiple levels of inane replies.

Myself, I top post, I bottom post, I inline reply sometimes, but these
days the way I read mail & the way mail clients are designed seems
most conducive to top-posting. I used to get upset if people
top-replied in mailing lists, but I've found I'm a lot happier now
that I don't let it bother me (I think this change of attitude
happened sometime in college when I realized the Jargon File isn't a
how-to document)


john