[H-GEN] So I was thinking

Greg Black gjb at gbch.net
Tue Sep 24 19:54:12 EDT 2002


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Annerley Al wrote:

| Yo. Could you clarify top-posting please? I believe that it is better to 
| reply to messages at the top, so that you don't have to scroll down through 
| stuff you probably don't need to read again before seeing the reply. If you 
| do need to refresh your memory on what has gone before, you can do so by 
| scrolling down if you need to.

If the reader won't need to re-read stuff from the original
message, the right thing to do is to delete it -- not just leave
it at the bottom of the new message.  This applies especially to
the drivel that mailing lists use to top and tail messages,
which gets extremely irritating when it appears six or seven
times in carelessly-edited messages.

It's worth bearing in mind that busy people often don't read all
the messages on a list -- sometimes they just skip messages from
people they don't know, or that they consider boring, or where
the subject is uninteresting, or where the first paragraph looks
untidy or dull; but then they may take an interest if the topic
has attracted attention from other people.

In this case, context that is correctly quoted in the message
makes it possible for those people to contribute.  Top posting
just makes this impossible.

| To me this is obviously the most courteous way to reply to a message, but I 
| see some would not agree. So, can people please explain why it can be 
| considered desirable to add comments to the bottom of a previous posting?

It's not a matter of just adding comments at the bottom.  It
involves thinking about what you're doing, using suitable tools
for the job[1], taking the time to set your reply out nicely,
and putting comments after the text they refer to.  See this
message for examples of this.

Greg

[1] Saying something like "my mailer doesn't allow me to do x"
    is not a valid claim -- there are dozens of mailers out
    there, both free and commercial, that can do a reasonable
    job on any common platform.  If your tools are no good, get
    new ones.  Do you wear shoes that are too small?  Do you
    push start your car rather than get a new battery?

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