[mythtv-users] posting protocol - bottom vs. top???

Allen Edwards allen.p.edwards at gmail.com
Sat Feb 16 22:46:12 UTC 2019


On Sat, Feb 16, 2019 at 12:58 PM Simon Hobson <linux at thehobsons.co.uk>
wrote:

> Allen Edwards <allen.p.edwards at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > This is the only place I have ever seen bottom posting. It is a pain but
> clearly much worse to do mixed posting.
>
> Short history lesson - "somewhat simplified". Once upon a time, the
> internet was small and mostly occupied by academics - and as it grew, it
> still retained that element of a community. Certain things were taken for
> granted - trimmed quotes, bottom posting and use of plain text - and
> programs worked with those.
>
> Then Micro$oft unleashed Outlook on the world - with defaults of "I don't
> care what your preferences are, I'm imposing mine on you" formatted text,
> and "I don't care if it's illogical" top posting. Because many new users
> simply hit reply, Outlook quoted the entire email (including signatures ?)
> and left the cursor at the top ready to type - a whole "generation" of
> users were brought up thinking that this was the way to do it.
>
> And because the quoted text disappeared off the bottom of the window and
> out of sight, they never thought about trimming it - or even realised how
> much was there.
>
> And now many people are now adamant that top posting is THE only correct
> way to do it - and I would deliberately annoy colleagues at work by
> correctly trimming and bottom posting in emails (and make then plain text
> as well).
>
> As someone pointed out earlier, it's the logical way to do it - in normal
> speech we generally wait until asked a question before giving the answer !
> You wouldn't meet a friend in the street and have a conversation that went
> along the lines of :
> > Yes, I'll see you later.
> >> Indeed, anyway, must dash. I'll be in the pub later, will you be there ?
> >>> Ah yes, annoying that.
> >>>> I'd not normally be shopping at this hour, but we'd run out of milk
> for breakfast.
> >>>>> Hi Jim, didn't expect to see you here.
>
> Of course, in this case it's quite easy to read the lines in reverse order
> - but when there are long passages it isn't. There have been time when I've
> had to scroll a long way down, then back up to the top of the quoted
> message, scroll down as I read it, scroll back up to the top of the
> following quoted message, scroll down as I read that, and so on. That is
> one reason for not trimming of course - allowing the entire thread to build
> up in one message so someone getting included later can see the history,
> but I think that's a feeble excuse for doing it wrong all the time.
>
> So why put the answers before the question in emails ? As evidence that
> bottom posting makes more sense, you only have to look at the contortions
> people use when top posting won't suffice, such as :
>
> > See my comments in RED below
>
>
> > Comments inline marked by SNH
>
>
> And they then go on to put comments after the relevant bits of what they
> are commenting on - highlighting them in some manner. Of course, once that
> message is replied to a few times, the formatting can get lost and no-one
> has a clue who wrote what ! That's not helped by Outlook not quoting
> properly - especially when replying as plain text - so can be unclear who
> said what anyway.
> If everyone bottom posted then there's no problem - it ALWAYS works. If
> you are doing a section by section response, then you simply bottom post
> after each section.
>

I guess I don't go back that far.  I did save some correspondence that was
important to me from 1994 and it is top posted. I looked for some old
Usenet posts but they are kind of hard to find.  At one time I could just
search on my name and my old usenet posts would come up. Not anymore.  All
I get is some hair stylist.
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