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Subject: Re: apology

Re: apology

From: Antony Stone <Antony.Stone_at_rockbox.open.source.it>
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:30:32 +0100

On Monday 22 June 2009 17:33, Jürgen Hestermann wrote:

> I am often wondering why people are top-posting at all. They have to be
> annoyed by this kind of replies too when they read them. But it seems
> they don't even notice the difference.

They don't have to be annoyed by it:

1. Some people appear to prefer top-posting, on the basis that they can just
start reading the latest comment in a discussion, without having to read
through something they've seen before.

I strongly suspect these people either don't use, don't understand, or use a
mail client which doesn't clearly show, the "quoted text" markers which are
(as far as I know) most commonly represented by either '>' symbols at the
left end of each line of the quoted text, or a solid line down the left of
the quoted text, and thereby allow one to quickly skip quoted text if
desired.

2. Some people, I am sure, neither notice nor care about the difference
between top-posting, bottom-posting, and inline posting. I would expect
these mainly to be the people who do not trim quoted text, whether they are
top-posting or bottom-posting their reply.

For me, this style is like proofreading a several-hundred or -thousand word
article, and listing all the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors on a
single sheet of paper, without referring to where they occur in the text.
The information is conveyed, but in a very unhelpful, difficult to process,
and inefficient manner.

3. Some people clearly don't even know what the terms "top-posting",
"bottom-posting", "trimming quoted text" etc mean, why it might matter, or
why the subject gets discussed so much. For those people I would please ask
you to take a look at one or more of:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style
        http://www.idallen.com/topposting.html
        http://www.html-faq.com/etiquette/?toppost


Regards,


Antony.

-- 
Programming is a Dark Art, and it will always be. The programmer is
fighting against the two most destructive forces in the universe:
entropy and human stupidity. They're not things you can always
overcome with a "methodology" or on a schedule.
 - Damian Conway, Perl God
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Received on 2009-06-22

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