Problem!

[Tristan Wibberley]

Joe(theWordy)Philbrook wrote:

 > Quoting should usually be sufficiently trimmed that top vs bottom and
 > or interleaved posting is a moot point. It makes more sense to say
 > either:

I'm adding another to your list, below:

> Bill said:
>> "something" 
> But I say "something else"
> 
> <---->
> 
>  -OR-
> 
> <---->
> 
> I say "something else"
> because Bill said:
>> "Something"
> 
> <---->
> 
> And let those who don't remember why Bill said "something" go to Bill's
> message to look it up. (this is easy if reading by threads...)
> 
> Than it ever will make sense to say:
> 
> <---->
> 
> Bill said:
>> Steve Said:
>>> Lisa said:
>>>> Sam said
>>>>> "whatever"
>>>> "a thing"
>>> "other thing"
>> "something
> "something else"
> me
> 
> <---->

-OR-

<---->

Sam said
 > "whatever"

Lisa said
 > "a thing"

Steve said:
 > "other thing"

Bill said
 > "something"

"something else"
me

<---->

Which is even nicer to read (and keeps the referenced comments in the 
post where you are talking about them), but you can lose the context of 
Bill's reply to Steve without giving Bill the scope to take issue with 
it. This is because if Bill quotes Steve, then you remove too much of 
what Steve said, you have still quoted Bill accurately. If the 
convention treats the grandparent quotation as a part of Bill's post, 
you are also quoting Bill's post and must maintain the context more 
accurately lest you misrepresent Bill by removing things that he deemed 
important to his line of reasoning. Additionally, with the non-nested 
alternative, it can be hard to see where one part of the discussion 
ends, and another starts - perhaps you should separate the parts into 
their own posts.

> (I hate counting ">" to figure out who said what, don't you)
> 
> If you need to back up in the thread you could just look at the actual
> previous post. If you or your chosen mail reader doesn't do threads, or
> if you don't have the previous posts on file then that's what web based
> archives are for.

Yes, you should expect to read grandparent posts to see *why* the parent 
said what he/she did, but if the post you are reading is actually 
referencing the grandparent (ie "your response doesn't fully answer the 
question, what about the case where..."), you should include those older 
posts. In that case nesting (or the more linear example I gave) are 
required.

> Top posting would put the new material right at the top where you can
> see it without having to scroll past all the old stuff again and again.
> If *EVERYONE* top posted, all I'd have to do to see the thread in logical
> sequence would be to: Read the 1st message, then just the new part of the
> next, then just the new part of the next, etc... This would help me
> quickly identify and skip over the ones that don't add anything more than
> a "me to" to the thread...

That is all very well when you have the context available. If not, you 
need sensible snipping.

> That (to me) is much more logical than making me have to scroll to the
> bottom of every single message I open just to see if the message is even
> still on the topic that caused me to open it in the first place...

It should rarely need much scrolling, and when I read this list, I 
rarely scroll past the context at the start because I don't read all 
messages, so I want to read the context of a particular one to see where 
it is coming from. That is especially true when googling to a message - 
top posting is horrible for that, I want comment-response in discourse 
order. In the cases where I do want to scroll past the context, that's 
normally just a matter of pressing space once or maybe twice.

I also think that sometimes a post should be a combination of the two: eg

msg1
<---->
<Big long proof>

Thus, I am clearly correct.

-- 
Steve
<---->

msg 2
<---->
Steve said:

[big long proof moved to end of message]

 > Thus, I am clearly correct.

Well, your assumptions are wrong, you listed:

 > Assumption 1
 > Assumption 2
 > Assumption 3

But you cannot assume the third.

-- Original Proof by Steve --
<Big long proof>

-- 
Bill
<---->

So scrolling should rarely be an issue. If it is, the message probably 
broke netiquette in another way.

-- 
Tristan Wibberley