[ruby-talk:11035] Re: Ruby Netiquitte

"Hal E. Fulton" <[e-mail]> wrote:
>From: Joseph McDonald <[e-mail]>
>To: ruby-talk ML <[e-mail]>
[...]
> > It is a pain to have to scroll down through a message you have
> > already read to get to the meat of the new message, but I'm sure
> > people have their reasons for wanting it like that (for now).
> >
>
>Thank you, Joe. I, for one, agree completely.
>
>In the first place, I resent having to scroll to the bottom to add my
>comments (especially when most people nowadays put the new
>material at the top).

I just asked what people do in an interactive forum
(PerlMonks).  The response was interesting.  Most
people apparently do put new material at the top.  But
the people who participated in many lists/newsgroups
put stuff at the bottom or interleaved and preferred it
when others did the same.

The reason had to do with the need to have context.  If
you are following a dozen different discussions on
multiple lists, it is very easy to lose the thread of
who is saying what.

>In the second place, I have to scroll AGAIN to skip over the junk
>I have already read.

My experience is that if you quote at the bottom, I need
to scroll past what you wrote to what you are replying
to, scan that, then scroll to the top and read there.

Another common issue is that I often want to refer
people back to a point in the sentence that they are
referring to.  That is much, much harder if the sentence
appears out of order.

>This is the same logic that causes mail clients to put the newest
>messages at the top. Do others do it the other way? Most recent
>at the bottom?

And for several years now I had just assumed that it
was because they decided to ignore what years of
experience had taught people about how online
discussions work best.

*grin*

Well it still works best for heavy posters, even though
I see now that it doesn't make sense to people who only
post lightly.

>But I will be a good netizen and continue doing it the asinine way.

Please try to think about it from the point of view of
someone who processes hundreds of emails per day.  To
that person it really *is* nicer to put the reply after
what you are replying to.  (But trim to size!)

Cheers,
Ben
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