Bottom vs. Top Posting (WAS: A Plea for sanity when posting to this list.)

Matthew S-H mathbymath at aol.com
Wed May 4 09:18:17 UTC 2005


I would just like to add a few more things based on this e-mail and a 
few more that I forgot to mention in my last e-mail.

1.  My last e-mail is a good example of where either an interleaved 
reply or a top-posted reply would be perfect.
    a.  You could interleave-post if you wanted to reply to each of my 
points individually and refute, deny, or agree with them (hopefully 
agree :) ).
    b.  You could top-post if you wanted to make a general comment and then 
continue with your own points.  For example, if you agreed with me and 
just wanted to add some more reasons for why top-posting is better.

2.  I think it is a lot more important to have a neatly organized e-mail 
than to carefully snip.  For example, I could easily cut down carefully 
on the e-mail I am replying to right now.  Instead, I will just cut out 
the larger portions that aren't needed and not be so careful.  I am 
rather sure that anyone with any intelligence will be able to re-read 
my quotations and understand the thread.  However, I will not be 
entirely careful and there may be some errata.  The time I am saving by 
doing this can be spent to carefully indent my points so they are 
easier to understand (such as my "1. a." numbering system above).

> top-posting promotes backwards reading habits (reading bottom to top)
3.  Don't be silly...
    *** A perfect example of a mixture between top-posting and bottom 
posting.  I was able to use a top-posting method to make some general 
comments and then change to an interleaved method to respond to a 
specific thing in his e-mail without having to describe what I was 
referring to.  This, of course, only works when responding to short 
quotes like that above.  Also note that I am about to switch back to 
the top-posting method without any loss of clarity.
        (In response to:
            >  Top-posting also means that interspersing comments in the 
original text
            >  (i.e. putting comments close to the text that insipred them) 
isn't done.                 )

4.  Note what I did above, too.  This I am not so sure was a good idea, 
but it got a point across.  In all honesty, I typed up that first part 
without even noticing his comment.  I then remembered this part and 
decided to include it.

5.  Bottom-posting encourages more thoughtless responses.  When you 
bottom-post, you can click reply immediately and read an e-mail one 
sentence at a time and reply to that sentence without reading the whole 
thing.  When you top-post, you are more likely to read the entire 
e-mail before even clicking the reply button.  Of course, you may refer 
back to the original e-mail while typing up your reply to get ideas on 
what to say, but you at least will have grasped the content of the 
original message.  Sometimes an explanation for a question you might 
have is given towards the end of the e-mail.  This can be a pain when 
you type up a long response to something and then continue to read only 
to find out that the other person gave a continuing explanation of 
their point and that your entire response was invalid.

> bringing up Outlook in a serious discussion on email clients is likely 
> to have people run away screaming in disgust ;-)
6.  Amen to that.
    *** I did it again....

> You are of course free to top-post, and I am free to reply the way I 
> want.
7.  If that is the way you feel, then why are we even having this 
discussion?  The entire point of this is to seek uniformity.  If you 
bottom-post and I top-post, it becomes hard to find posts when looking 
back in the "history" of a thread.

> sometimes top-posts are easy to read (yours was) but I find it to be 
> more work to read long top-posts and therefore often skip replying!
8.  As I said in my last e-mail, clarity is important in any e-mail.  If 
a bottom-poster decides it would be a good idea to snip out too much of 
what he is quoting and then respond to something without properly 
indicating what he is referring to, it can confuse people just the 
same.  If a top-post is very long and cannot be understood because it 
is responding to specific points and is not properly referring to them, 
then it should not be a top-post.  That is not to say, however, that it 
should be a bottom-post.  An interleaved-post would serve it just fine.

9.  Top posts are a lot more like real conversations, contrary to what 
was said in a previous e-mail (I know this is bad form, but I am typing 
this e-mail up from a different computer than the one I was at 20-30 
minutes ago and I don't have access to that e-mail in order to quote 
it).  In a real conversation, everyone involved already knows what is 
going on.  Each thing that is said comes to the forefront (or in this 
case, the top) of the conversation.  If someone forgot something or 
wants the basis for someone's comment to be re-explained, they usually 
ask.  In this case, this can be substituted by a person just looking 
back at the quoted messages.  To respond to the idea of new people 
entering a thread mid-way, I can make another analogy.  If you are 
having a conversation among a group of friends (about a public topic 
and in a public place) and someone else decides to come over and join 
in, you usually will let them (especially if they have something 
important to say).  However, they are expected not to bother everyone 
else.  In a conversation like that, it would be considered very rude 
for them to ask for the whole conversation to be repeated.  They can 
either listen in and try to figure out what is going on or leave the 
conversation.  It is not too hard for a new participant in a thread to 
review the messages in the thread  by starting with the last one on the 
list.  And since these "incomers" form a minority, there is no reason 
to sacrifice the comfort of everyone else in the thread to offset the 
rather small inconvenience they have of reading bottom-up.  And this is 
especially true when there are many threads but each one has only a few 
messages of depth.  When people reply to about a hundred e-mails a day, 
it can help to have things "right in front of you".  However, when 
you're new to a single thread, you're probably only going to have to 
back-track for that thread.  Therefore, you will only have to read a 
few e-mails (not that big of a deal).


Anyway, I'm out of ideas to support this argument.  Lets make this a 
tag-team match and I'll let someone else take over, lolz.



~Matt


On May 4, 2005, at 3:18 AM, Magnus Therning wrote:

> On Tue, May 03, 2005 at 09:11:00PM -0400, Matt Galvin wrote:
>> How? I find that having the most recent reply at the top of the
>> messages makes it easy to find.
>
> Hmm. I find it less convenient. Yes, the response is right there, in
> your face, but the original text is at the bottom. This means having to
> read the end of the email first, just to understand the response. In
> short, top-posting promotes backwards reading habits (reading bottom to
> top). I use a mail reader where commented text has a different colour
> from the reply, so I can easily skip over old text if I'm familiar with
> the discussion.
>
> Top-posting also means that interspersing comments in the original text
> (i.e. putting comments close to the text that insipred them) isn't 
> done.
>
>> Its right on top, right in your face where it should be. Newest
>> content first so you can read whats new instead of having to find
>> whats new. IMHO, I prefer it this way and so does Google(and MS, and
>> Apple), in Gmail(i understand not everyone uses it)(and Outlook and
>> Mail) when replying, the cusor is positioned at the very top of the
>> message in order to top post/reply. IMHO evo is just backwards, which
>> is part of why I personally don't use it anymore.
>
> Are you seriously saying that top-posting is good because a few email
> clients position the cursor above the commented text? I use an email
> client where the cursor is put on the From: line, does that mean I
> should put my comments in the email header? Are you too lazy to use the
> arrow keys? ;-)
>
> Of the email clients you mention I've only used Gmail and Outlook. 
> AFAIK
> Gmail positions the cursor at the top, but it still handles commented
> text and its replies no matter where in the mail they are located.
> Outlook just plain sucks! I top-post whenever I'm forced to use it (as 
> I
> do in Lotus Notes), bringing up Outlook in a serious discussion on 
> email
> clients is likely to have people run away screaming in disgust ;-)
>
> You are of course free to top-post, and I am free to reply the way I
> want. I write replies so that _I_ find them easy to read. I only reply
> to emails I can read and understand, sometimes top-posts are easy to
> read (yours was) but I find it to be more work to read long top-posts
> and therefore often skip replying!
>
> /M
>
> -- 
> Magnus Therning                    (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
> magnus at therning.org
> http://magnus.therning.org/
>
> Software is not manufactured, it is something you write and publish.
> Keep Europe free from software patents, we do not want censorship
> by patent law on written works.
>
> You call it untidy, I call it LRU ordered
>      -- Daniel Barlow
> -- 
> ubuntu-users mailing list
> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
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