From: Charles O Nutter Date: 2006-09-02T07:37:58+09:00 Subject: Re: Off topic: What is "top posting" ?? ------=_Part_104507_13868844.1157150250801 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline I promised myself I wouldn't reply to anything on this very divisive thread, but I'll give it one more shot. On 9/1/06, Chad Perrin wrote: > > So does mine, but I still don't like having to switch back and forth > between emails to get context. I'd rather read inline responses or > ... > You talk about how great your mail client or mail user agent is, but > somehow you overlook the fact that a decent client or user agent should > provide a means to either open emails by default at the end of the text > or move to the end with a single keystroke. Mine does that. What's > wrong with yours? > .... . . and that sounds great, except that sometimes context involves two > or three previous messages -- which gets rather ugly and difficult to ..and one other comment about having to "open" emails many times... Look, if you don't have a mail client that lets you have a couple emails open, that's your own choice. There are these things called "windows" and "multitasking" that allow you to have multiple "windows" of content in them available at the same time. In fact, I hear you can even have them all *on the same screen*. I know plenty of people who refuse to use anything but pine or elm or mutt and then complain about people who don't bend over backwards accomodating their archaic choice of UI. Again, it's not my problem that "graph icks" are something you choose to avoid. Most do not. Seriously though, I use GMail, and as other posters have commented, the threading and handling of quoted text is really superb. If I want context for a message...ANY message, including top-posted or inlined or bottomed or lefted or righted, I have the entire thread present at a click. It presents emails in the "preferred" direction--top to bottom--and I don't delete email (nor have I ever deleted email I read or intend to read). Given the fact that tools exist to allow me to 1. hit reply 2. type 3. send, it becomes a much larger chore for me to drag along outdated conventions based on 80x25 text-based mail and newsreaders. Yeah, life's a bitch, and it sucks that this whole internet thing took off and people don't all use text consoles for emailing or posting news. You're going to have to deal with it someday, and it's arrogant presumption to say that the old way is right and any innovations to the contrary are wrong. I don't think anyone wants your pity, just your common damned courtesy. > It's also in your best interests to avoid being too much of a chore to > read, since your words will be tossed in the direction of /dev/null more I generally only top-post if there's nothing major in the content I need to refer to, or if doing so would drastically break up the flow of the thread. If others are bottom-posting, and I need context, I'll follow suit. Here I'm inlining everything because it's a point-by-point rebuttal. If I just wanted to say "I disagree" I'd probably have top-posted and been done with it. I opened this email to read it. I don't want to have to close it, open > another email, read that, close that one, then open this email again to > read it. win-dows. mul-ti-task-ing. It's 2006 man. My time is infinitely more important to me than yours, so I don't care > that you had to spend an extra three seconds trimming, and another two > seconds moving the cursor around for inserting text where needed. More > to the point, however, I know (where you do not seem to realize this) > that if I want others to read what I have to say, it would behoove me to > accomodate them rather than simply shoving any additional time spent on > them, especially since I will not be saving much time if they reply to > me in the same fashion and I get the same treatment in return. Then I should be able to expect that you would accomodate my wishes as well. If I top-post first, will you respond in kind? Why is your way right and mine's wrong? Why must I bend over backwards for your way? Why should everyone "bottom post" because some number of people wish it? Perhaps it's a majority and perhaps it's not. You should be trimming whether you top- or bottom-post, anyway, so your > comments about optional context don't really support top-posting as a > preferable alternative as far as I can see. I generally do trim in all cases, but if I needn't specific context in my reply, I shan't bother with it. I generally won't completely delete the email being replied to so it's obvious which mail I'm replying to...and because it takes more time. I inline where appropriate, and I top-post when it's not necessary. This allows for context to be maintained when context is important, and shoved aside when it's not needed. -- Contribute to RubySpec! @ www.headius.com/rubyspec Charles Oliver Nutter @ headius.blogspot.com Ruby User @ ruby.mn JRuby Developer @ www.jruby.org ------=_Part_104507_13868844.1157150250801--