From: Phillip Gawlowski Date: 2008-05-28T01:19:32+09:00 Subject: Re: documentation for ruby? -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Mark Wilden wrote: | On May 27, 2008, at 7:39 AM, Todd Benson wrote: | |> Bottom posting tends to take on a more natural conversational feel. | | Only if a single email is regarded as a conversation. In actuality, the | -thread- is the conversation. Imagine if in a real conversation, people | felt impelled to prefix their remarks with every other remark that's | already been made. Condensing what has been said by somebody else actually is a honored practice. Summing up the state of affairs (in spoken conversation) helps focusing on what is being said by all parties and avoids the nasty habit of getting side-tracked in minutiae or mired in tangents. | I bottom post because I don't want to get jumped on by the anti-toppers. Consider that not every one is a) using a threaded email client, b) follows all threads all the time, and b) most people skim before they read (information filtering is a survival tactic). Just top posting might (*might*) be acceptable in a business/one-on-one conversation, but is considered rude otherwise: You don't take the time to adhere to convention / netiquette / waste other people's time in putting your response into context, why should *others* take the time to read what you write? | But then, I also trim, so it doesn't really matter. What I hate is | having to scroll down just to see what's been added to the thread. Which is especially aggravating if it is a rather high signal / noise ratio (i.e. an AOL following a screen or two of content). - -- Phillip Gawlowski Twitter: twitter.com/cynicalryan Blog: http://justarubyist.blogspot.com ~ - You know you've been hacking too long when... ...you test a program, and it fails, so you jump into the editor, look at it, jump out, recompile and test (without making changes) and it still doesn't work, so you jump ........ and it still doesn't work ...... recompile without any changes........ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkg8NM0ACgkQbtAgaoJTgL/xIQCaAyGRaptRE0h9mxAirU4ZbofA srYAn3O3NM3eeLHssDliQTcqqvgkWeVb =Zepl -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----