Re: top posting

Ivan Sergio Borgonovo wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:00:00 -0600
> "Scott Marlowe" <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
>> You're certainly not. I can't tell you how many times I've
>> carefully replied to someone with inline quoting, only to get some
>> top post response. I then ask them politely not to top post, fix
>> the format, reply, and get another top post reponse.
>
> Jumping in here just cos I got tired to read here (nothing personal
> Scott).
> It is generally fun to read this kind of never-die thread in search
> of the most stubborn reply but at the 4th reply they start to look
> all equally stubborn.
>
>
> a) people that have used email more than the average newcomers
> and tried more clients they can remember agree that top posting in
> technical discussions is generally[1] not efficient
> b) this community agree that top posting is not welcome
> c) replaying contextually and snipping will give people more chances
> to get a reply
> d) people here continue to remember that top posting is not efficient
> to educate newcomers
>
> I'd suggest to people that think differently to just conform to the
> rule.
> I'd suggest to idealists to avoid to convince stubborn people and as
> a retaliation to their anti-social behaviour to avoid to reply to
> their questions if they insist in not conforming to the rules or
> pollute the list with pro top posting arguments.
>
> This thread comes over and over and over on every mailing list.
> We'd have a link pointing to the reasons why there are generally
> better alternatives to top posting and cut the thread ASAP.
> It is surprising how people with more experience than me on the
> Internet get trapped in this kind of thread.
>
> *Especially because we could use their time much better.*
>
> Every time people like Tom Lane and Joshua D. Drake waste their time
> in such kind of dump people on this list lose the chance to read
> interesting stuff about Postgres, SQL and DB.
>
>
> [1] In general; commonly; extensively, __though not universally__;
> most frequently.
>
> BTW it is not a case that Computer Science and *Information*
> Technology are strict relatives
>

I am subscribed to some other technical mailing lists on which the
standard is top posting. Those people claim that filing through
interleaved quotes or scrolling to the bottom just to see a sentence or
two is a waste of their time. It is the same thing only backwards.

Me, I don't care either way. I try to conform to whatever is the
standard for whatever list it is. Why annoy the people giving free support?

I suspect that neither is truly better, and that some of the original /
very early / expert members just preferred bottom posting for whatever
reasons, and it propagated into the "standard" for this list.

-- Stephen