Why do people detest top posting so much?

[Bart Silverstrim]

Michael.Coll-Barth at VerizonWireless.com wrote:
>  
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Bart Silverstrim
> 
>> Easier to hand out a brain belch. Too lazy to properly format 
>> a message, 
>> too properly to actually compose a message to others...top posting is 
>> the older generation's equivalent to txtspeak. "easier" means 
> 
> LOL Bart.  Being an old timer ( newsgroup wise ), I thought I would
> throw something in here.  I am waiting for some stuff to run so I have a
> few cycles to waste.
> 
> Bottom-posting is actually a creation of us old fart newsgroup readers.

While I'm not from the days when the only choice was Unix, I am old 
enough to have used the CLI and resented moving to Windows and from 
there moving to things that actually worked...so I'm not an old timer 
but I think I'm "close enough" in technology years to be getting a 
pension by now.

All I can really say to this is that I don't care where it was 
invented...bottom posting for old timer UNIX newsgroup readers, top 
posting for people who always used Outlook, whatever. Take a longer and 
more complicated message, done once inline and once top posted and 
printed both out and laid side by side, and I will say that %99 of the 
time I'll be able to read and understand the inline quoting much more 
easily.

The fact is that even my aspergian mind is able to more clearly discern 
the message when the quoted text is color coded (thank you Mail.app, 
Thunderbird...) and indented with > so my eye is skipping right through 
what is needed and skimming everything else, in order, and addressing 
information accordingly.

I don't really care anymore. If people keep top posting I normally 
delete the post without finishing it. If what they have to say isn't 
important enough to compose a message...compose...there's a difference, 
as much important yet subtly different between "I'm hearing you" and 
"I'm listening to you"...a message, then I don't have time to sort or 
deal with the slow build of frustration involved in decoding your message.

  >> "I don't
>> have to trim the post or actually put thought into what I'm 
>> trying to say."
> 
> Bottom-posters are just as bad.  ...two thousand lines of test... "Me
> too!"  Ugh!

That's why I've always said inline posting except where it does not 
clarify your message. It's natural when you compose a message instead of 
broadcast a brain fart.

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Never understood the need for these disclaimers. I've not found a case 
once where they were legally binding, and on top of that, when you see 
it you've already read the damn message. What then? Fry the part of my 
brain storing the data of the message?

If it's "corporate policy" to include such things in your emails, do you 
REALLY want to advocate that "top posting is what we use in the 
corporate world" when it really serves no function but to clutter 
messages with worthless tripe? Instead of appealing to reason, something 
that makes sense, we turn to the tried and true "it was invented/agreed 
upon by committee" or "it's how we do it back there." You know what 
things are done in the animal husbandry profession? Want to explain to 
your wife that that's what they do at work so she shouldn't be mad? 
Probably not. Maybe it's best not to carry work practices into other 
environments where they're not appropriate.