[OT] Top Posting
From: Guy Macon (http://www.guymacon.com)
Date: 06/18/04
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Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 05:09:03 -0700
>Austin Lesea <austin@xilinx.com> wrote, in part:
>
>>I do not think that there is an approved way of responding in this
>>group, is there?
Here is how *not* to do it:
"I'll see you at Linda's wedding."
"Well, see ya soon."
"Congratulations!"
"Ten thousand a year."
"How much?"
"Got a really big raise this time."
"Sorry to hear it. How's the job?"
"She's not feeling well. Flu, I think."
"Same as ever. How's yours?"
"How's your wife?"
"They painted her purple. They should call her the Prune Fart now."
"Good. Did you hear what Martin and Sheila did to the Sea Breeze?"
"Good, and you?"
"Bill! How the heck are you?"
Here is further information:
Why is Bottom-posting better than Top-posting
Adapted from http://fmf.fwn.rug.nl/~anton/topposting.html
By Anton Smit and H.W. de Haan
Definitions:
Top-posting: Writing the message above the original text,
when one replies to an email or a post in a newsgroup.
Bottom-posting: The opposite of top-posting. Now the new
message is placed below the original text.
As Usenet-readers, we are often annoyed by people who keep
top-posting. This is considered as not good 'Net etiquette'.
The majority of Usenet-users prefer bottom-posting. Below
you can find our arguments why bottom-posting is better
than top-posting.
In addition to bottom-posting, it is customary to leave out
non-relevant parts of the message with regard to the reply,
and to put the reply directly beneath the quoted relevant
parts.
[1] Because it is proper Usenet Etiquette. Check out the
following URL: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html .
It is a little outdated but still has a lot of valid points.
Let us quote something from this site:
"If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be
sure you summarize the original at the top of the message,
or include just enough text of the original to give a
context. This will make sure readers understand when they
start to read your response. Since NetNews, especially,
is proliferated by distributing the postings from one host
to another, it is possible to see a response to a message
before seeing the original. Giving context helps everyone.
But do not include the entire original!"
[2] We use a good news reader like Forte Agent. Good newsreaders
like Agent put the signature by default at the end of the post,
which is the Usenet convention. Microsoft Outlook Express however
has some serious bugs. Let us quote someone we know:
"The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably
the day they start making vacuum cleaners." -Ernst Jan Plugge
We are programmers ourselves, and we know it is very easy to
implement to put a signature at the end of the post instead of
putting it directly above the post you are replying to and can
not change the position. Forte Agent has as a feature that reply
to a post it will remove the signature (recognizable by '-- ',
note the extra space) and everything below it, so it will remove
a part of the original message. This is good Usenet practice so
Agent is not faulty. Outlook Express on the other hand is faulty,
check this bugreport regarding the Usenet signature delimiter.
http://www.okinfoweb.com/moe/bugs/bugs_047.htm
If you want to try Agent, you can get it at http://www.forteinc.com/
[3] Top-posting makes posts incomprehensible. Firstly: In normal
conversations, one does not answer to something that has not yet
been said. So it is unclear to reply to the top, whilst the original
message is at the bottom. Secondly: In western society a book is
normally read from top to bottom. Top-posting forces one to stray
from this convention: Reading some at the top, skipping to the bottom
to read the question, and going back to the top to continue. This
annoyance increases even more than linear with the number of top-posts
in the message. If someone replies to a thread and you forgot what the
thread was all about, or that thread was incomplete for some reasons,
it will be quite tiresome to rapidly understand what the thread was
all about, due to bad posting and irrelevant text which has not been
removed.
[4] To prevent hideously long posts with a minimal account of new
text, it is good Usenet practice to remove the non-relevant parts
and optionally summarize the relevant parts of the original post,
with regard to one's reply. Top-posting inevitably leads to long
posts, because most top-posters leave the original message intact.
All these long posts not only clutter up discussions, but they also
clutter up the server space.
[5] Top-posting makes it hard for bottom-posters to reply to the
relevant parts: it not possible to answer within the original message.
Bottom-posting does not make top-posting any harder.
[6] Some people will argue that quoting looks bad due line wrapping.
This can simply be dealt with by dropping Outlook Express as a start,
and using only linewidths of 65 - 70 characters. Otherwise one has
do it manually, and that can be tiresome.
[7] A reason given by stubborn top-posters: they don't like to scroll
to read the new message. We like to disagree here, because we always
have to scroll down to see the original message and after that to
scroll back up, just to see to what they are replying to. As a result
you have to scroll twice as much when reading a top-poster's message.
As a counterargument they say (believe us they do): "You can check
the previous message in the discussion". This is even more tiresome
than scrolling and with the unreliable nature of Usenet (and even
email is inevitably unreliable), the previous message in the
discussion can be simply unavailable.
[8] Some newsgroups have strict conventions concerning posting in
their charter. As an example we can tell you that in most Dutch
newsgroups, you will be warned, killfiled or maybe even flamed, if
you fail to follow Usenet conventions or if you do not quote according
to the quoting guidelines. In general: it is better to practice the
guidelines, if one does not want to get flamed in a newsgroup one
just subscribed to.
We can conclude that there are no good reasons we know of for top-posting.
The most top-posts originate from the minimal work people spend on making
posts. We think that one should be proud of one's post, that is it
contains relevant content, well-formed sentences and no irrelevant
'b*llsh*t', before uploading to your newsserver. If the majority of the
group will adhere to this convention, the group will be nicer, tidier
and easier to read.
As a final remark we want to bring non-quoting into mind. This means
that the original content of an email or Usenet post is completely
removed. It makes it very hard for a reader to find out to what and
whom one is replying. This phenomenon can be partly attributed to
wrong settings of news- and email-clients, and partly to people who
want to start with clean replies.
- Next message: Guy Macon: "Re: Against TEMPEST"
- Previous message: Tom St Denis: "Re: Cryptogram Comment"
- In reply to: John Savard: "Re: triple DES with different keys, is it 2E112 or 2E168 to break?"
- Next in thread: Mok-Kong Shen: "Re: triple DES with different keys, is it 2E112 or 2E168 to break?"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
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