From: Christopher Chaltain <chaltain_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 12 May 2015 07:46:19 -0500

On 05/12/2015 07:14 AM, Kyle wrote:
> According to leonard morris:
> # BTW, I have been on this list for years but I don't know if top posting
> # is still forbidden since I have not posted in a long time.
>
> Did I top post? I didn't think I quoted anything, as I restated the
> question in the answer so that I could minimize quoting. I'm one of
> those people who feels that quoting is largely unnecessary. For example,
> It makes no sense to me to read
>
> It gets even worse when people post at the bottom of other people who
> have posted at the bottom of other people. Once it gets past 1 or two,
> it can be pure murder to try to read through, especially when I've
> already read the original post as many as 6 times by the time I get to
> the last message in the thread. Instead, I prefer to write the answer to
>
> I don't top post, and I don't bottom post. On those very rare occasions
> when I do quote, I quote as little as possible, shorten the attribution
> line so that it doesn't take a million years to speak it all, (Yes, I
> use speech here), and put my answer inline. You will never see me top
> post, and you will rarely if ever see me bottom post, as I have far
> better ways to quote if I feel I must. That said, on lists where people
> feel they have to pick at the way someone who is trying to help someone
> posts the answer to a question, especially if they aren't either the
> person asking the question or trying to help answer it, I rarely post at
> all, and I generally make my own feelings known at such times. In fact,
> you are more likely to see me complaining to the picky people for top
> posting, because I do use speech, and trying to get through all that
> stuff that I've already read 3, 4 or even more times just to try to find
> the response when using speech is like trying to find the needle at the
> bottom of a haystack. In fact, I prefer to read messages in threaded
> form, as a conversation. Real conversations go like
> When was the last time you had a conversation where the person you were
> speaking with repeated every word you said before giving their response?
> Believe me, that is very annoying, especially if you're repeating back
> in the same way. This is how I feel about e-mail, which is now threaded
> so that it is very easy to reread anything I may have missed without
> having to have someone repeat the same thing over and over ad nauseum.
> Sent from my exercise ball

I agree hard and fast rules on whether to top post or bottom post are
silly. The key is that the reader understands what you're saying as
easily as possible. That being said, I respect the wishes of the list
I'm on.

Threaded email is great, but I like to process my messages as I go,
deleting and filing them as I read them. If someone picks up a thread a
day or two after I've read anything else in that thread then I may not
recall everything that's been said before, so I appreciate the quoted
thread at the bottom of the message. I've tossed quite a few good is
referring to.answers to questions lately because I don't know what the
information was referring to. I'm also sure there were questions I could
have answered, but the lack of context made it impossible.

Bottom quoting may not make sense in a non-technical list, but it does
help when having a technical discussion where referring to source code
or a particular statement is important. Again, top posting or bottom
posting or in line responses depends on the nature of the list and the
messages.

IMHO, proof reading your responses and thinking about how others will
read it goes way beyond hard and fast rules over top posting or bottom
posting.

-- 
Christopher (CJ)
chaltain at Gmail
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Received on 2015-05-12