From: Chad Perrin Date: 2006-09-02T07:54:15+09:00 Subject: Re: Off topic: What is "top posting" ?? On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 07:11:52AM +0900, James Britt wrote: > William Crawford wrote: > > >I'm not aiming to anger anyone, or try to get people to break rules, > >written or unwritten. The OP asked a serious question and everyone has > >been giving serious answers. It just so happens that the entire > >discussion is personal preference. > > > > I've had this discussion with other people on other lists. I've been > surprised at the vitriol it can inspire (largely, in my experience, from > those who dislike being asked not to top post; apparently it is > *physically painful* to avoid top posting when using Web-based list > readers ). That's an interesting point. With rare exception, the amount of anger and bile flowing forth from top-posters who resent being asked to alter their behavior seems . . . unproportional, in my experience. People who dislike top-posting, from what I've seen, are quite happy to defend their point of view extensively in a discussion of the topic, and similarly quite happy to simply redirect anything that gets too top-posty to /dev/null and ignore it (after an at least nominal attempt to get people to clean up the spaghetti so that it's readable, sometimes). . . . and, ultimately, that's my final argument for avoiding TOFU (text over, fullquote under) posting: if you actually want me, and the legions of readers like me, to read and respond to your commentary, it might be a good idea to make it less than annoying to try to sort out what you're saying and the context of it. > > What struck me as interesting was that many people have told me that if > I dislike top posting, then tough titties. But, hey, that works out > fine. If I cannot quickly and easily parse a message, I skip it and > move on. Less work for James is always a good thing. Case in point. -- CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ] print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);