From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2006-09-02T06:27:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Off topic: What is "top posting" ??

On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 06:05:13AM +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> 
> Chad Perrin wrote:
> > Speak for yourself.  I assume that people should be accomodated in the
> > most reasonable manner possible.  Ultimately, the most potentially put
> > out by top-posting are the blind, who (using screen readers) would end
> > up with an unnavigable mass of out-of-order text.
> 
> It's interesting that you should mention blind correspondents, because
> one of them once told me he *preferred* top posting. He put it this way:
> "I know what I said, I don't want to hear the whole story over again to
> find out what *you* added." Of course, this assumes that people follow
> the traditional Usenet etiquette of deleting all of the thread except
> the part you are responding to.

That's fine . . . until you get a discussion that is complex enough to
require two or three layers of context quoting.  Besides, not everything
interesting said in the world was said by YOU.  Sometimes, you read a
response to something someone ELSE said.

. . . and sometimes, I do other things for a while, then come back to
the mailing list thread and don't want to have to open multiple emails
to get a sense of context again.

I have heard/read two complaints from users of screen readers about
top-posting.  I've never heard/read the converse, as you have.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);