On Sun, 30 Aug 2020 at 10:04, Long Wind <longwi...@yahoo.com> wrote: > On Saturday, August 29, 2020, 7:31:03 PM EDT, David <bouncingc...@gmail.com> > wrote:
>> Many people have requested: >> CAN YOU PLEASE STOP TOP-POSTING. >> >> This means "please stop writing your reply at the top >> of the message". [...] >> Explained here: >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Choosing_the_proper_posting_style >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Trimming_and_reformatting >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#How_much_to_trim > top-posting is default behavior of yahoo mail. Same here for gmail. Those defaults are not suitable for a mailing list, so instead I make an effort and do the polite thing that everyone else does. > i don't know why it's inconvenient for some list users. A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? > i don't know why it's inconvenient for some list users. Because it's easier when each message contains all the relevant information. The writer does the work of editing, so that 100's or more readers don't have to read the entire back thread to remember the context every time there is a new message. > wikipedia.org is blocked in china. Sorry, I forgot. I pasted below is the text from wikipedia, unfortunately it is harder to read without the colours and formatting in the original. I hope it helps you. ==== Choosing the proper posting style ==== The choice between interleaved, top and bottom posting generally depends on the forum and on the nature of the message. Some forums (such as personal e-mail) are quite tolerant, in which case the proper style is dictated by taste and effectiveness. In any case one should consider whether the reply will be easily read by the intended recipient(s). Their e-mail interfaces may have different rules for handling quoted line markers and long lines, so a reply that looks readable in one's screen may be jumbled and incorrectly colored on theirs. Blank lines and judicious trimming of the original text may help avoid ambiguity. The interleaved reply style can require more work in terms of labeling lines, but possibly less work in establishing the context of each reply line. It also keeps the quotes and their replies close to each other and in logical reading order, and encourages trimming of the quoted material to the bare minimum. This style makes it easier for readers to identify the points of the original message that are being replied to; in particular, whether the reply misunderstood or ignored some point of the original text. It also gives the sender freedom to arrange the quoted parts in any order, and to provide a single comment to quotations from two or more separate messages, even if these did not include each other. Top- and bottom-posting are sometimes compared to traditional written correspondence in that the response is a single continuous text, and the whole original is appended only to clarify which letter is being replied to. Customer service e-mail practices, in particular, often require that all points be addressed in a clear manner without quoting, while the original e-mail message may be included as an attachment. Including the whole original message may be necessary also when a new correspondent is included in an ongoing discussion.[11][12] Especially in business correspondence, an entire message thread may need to be forwarded to a third party for handling or discussion. On the other hand, in environments where the entire discussion is accessible to new readers (such as newsgroups or online forums), full inclusion of previous messages is inappropriate; if quoting is necessary, the interleaved style is probably best. If the original message is to be quoted in full, for any reason, bottom-posting is usually the most appropriate format—because it preserves the logical order of the replies and is consistent with the Western reading direction from top to bottom. It is not uncommon during discussions concerning top-posting vs. bottom-posting to hear quotes from "Netiquette Guidelines (RFC 1855)". While many RFCs are vetted and approved though a committee process, some RFCs, such as RFC 1844, are just "Informational" and in reality, sometimes just personal opinions. (Additional information on "Informational" RFCs can be found in RFC 2026, under "4.2.2 Informational" and "4.2.3 Procedures for Experimental and Informational RFCs".) The nature of RFC 1855 should be considered while reading the following discussion. According to RFC 1855, a message can begin with an abbreviated summary; i.e. a post can begin with a paraphrasing instead of quoting selectively. Specifically, it says: If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just enough text of the original to give a context. This will make sure readers understand when they start to read your response. Since NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the postings from one host to another, it is possible to see a response to a message before seeing the original. Giving context helps everyone. But do not include the entire original! Interleaved reply combined with top-posting combines the advantages of both styles. However this also results in some portions of the original message being quoted twice, which takes up extra space and may confuse the reader. In forwarding it is sometimes preferred to include the entire original message (including all headers) as a MIME attachment, while in top-posted replies these are often trimmed or replaced by an attribution line. An untrimmed quoted message is a weaker form of transcript, as key pieces of meta information are destroyed. (This is why an ISP's Postmaster will typically insist on a forwarded copy of any problematic e-mail, rather than a quote.) These forwarded messages are displayed in the same way as top-posting in some mail clients. Top-posting is viewed as seriously destructive to mailing-list digests, where multiple levels of top-posting are difficult to skip. The worst case would be top-posting while including an entire digest as the original message. Some believe that "top-posting" is appropriate for interpersonal e-mail, but inline posting should always be applied to threaded discussions such as newsgroups. This example is occasionally used in mailing lists to mock and discourage top-posting:[13][14][15] A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? Bottom-posting preserves the logical order of the replies and is consistent with the Western reading direction from top to bottom. The major argument against bottom-posting is that scrolling down through a post to find a reply is inconvenient, especially for short replies to long messages, and many inexperienced computer users may not know that they need to scroll down to find a reply to their query. When sending an untrimmed bottom-posted message, one might indicate inline replies with a notice at the top such as "I have replied below." However, as many modern mail programs are capable of displaying different levels of quotation with different colors (as seen in the bottom-posting example on this page), this is not so much of an issue any more. Another method to indicate that there is more reply text still to come is to always end your text with a signature line. Then a reader who is familiar with your reply style will know to continue to read until your signature line appears. This method is particularly polite and useful when using the inline reply method, since it tells the reader that your response is complete at the point where your signature line appears. ==== Interleaved style ==== In the interleaved reply style (also called "inline reply", "interlined reply", "point-by-point rebuttal", or, sometimes, "bottom posting"), the original message is broken into two or more sections, each followed by a specific reply or comment. A reply in inline style may also include some top-posted or bottom-posted comments that apply to the whole reply message, rather than to a specific point. For example: I have been following the discussion about the new product line. Here are my thoughts. Joe wrote: > Will our prices be competitive? That may not be a problem for now, we still have a quality edge. > We do not have enough trained people on the West Coast. We have many > new employees but they do not know our products yet. We can bring them here for a crash training course. Mary wrote: > We still do not have a clear marketing plan. Peter, would you take charge of that? Let me know if you need help. On the whole, I am quite optimistic. It looks like we will be shipping the basic system before the end of this quarter. Nancy The interleaved reply style can also be combined with top-posting: selected points are quoted and replied to, as above, and then a full copy of the original message is appended. > Can you present your report an hour later? Yes I can. The summary will be sent no later than 5pm. Jim At 10.01am Wednesday, Danny wrote: >> 2.00pm: Present report > Jim, I have a meeting at that time. Can you present your report an hour later? > >> 4.30pm: Send out summary of feedback > Also if you do the above, this may need to happen later too. > Danny > > At 9.40am Wednesday, Jim wrote: >> My schedule for today will be: >> 10.00am: Gather data for report >> 2.00pm: Present report to team >> 4.30pm: Send out summary of feedback >> Jim Interleaving was the predominant reply style in the Usenet discussion lists, years before the existence of the WWW and the spread of e-mail and the Internet outside the academic community.[3] Interleaving was also common originally in e-mail, because many internet users had been exposed to Usenet newsgroups and other Internet forums, where it is still used.[citation needed] The style became less common for email after the opening of the internet to commercial and non-academic personal use.[citation needed] One possible reason is the large number of casual e-mail users that entered the scene at that time.[citation needed] Another possible reason is the inadequate support provided by the reply function of some webmail readers, which either do not automatically insert a copy of the original message into the reply, or do so without any quoting prefix level indicators.[citation needed] Finally, most forums, wiki discussion pages, and blogs (such as Slashdot) essentially impose the bottom-post format, by displaying all recent messages in chronological order.[citation needed]. Interleaving continues to be used on technical mailing lists where clarity within complex threads is important.[citation needed]. ==== Trimming and reformatting ==== When replying to long discussions, particularly in newsgroup discussions, quoted text from the original message is often trimmed so as to leave only the parts that are relevant to the reply—or only a reminder thereof. This practice is sometimes called "trim-posting" or "edited posting", and is recommended by some manuals of posting etiquette.[2] Sometimes an indicator of deleted text is given, usually in the form of a square bracketed tag as: "[snipped]", "[trimmed]", or simply "[...]". The text that is retained may be edited to some extent, e.g. by re-folding the lines. For example, if the original message was This is a reminder that the project meeting which was canceled last week will be held today in the 3rd floor conference room at 14:30 sharp. Everybody must attend. --Mary the reply may be > the project meeting [...] will be held today in the 3rd floor > conference room Mary, be sure to check the mics in that room. --Joe or even just > 3rd floor conference room Mary, be sure to check the mics in that room. --Joe Deleted text may also be replaced by a summary in brackets: On Thursday, Jim wrote: > The movie clearly adds a sense of menace to the story > which is not present in the original book. > [...claim that the darker tone weakens the movie...] I disagree. The darker tone works well, once one understands the two are aimed at different audiences. Automatically included text (such as signature blocks, free e-mail service ads, and corporate disclaimers) are more likely to be deleted, usually without ellipses, than manually written text. Some posters may delete any parts of the original message that they are not replying to. Some posters delete only parts dealing with issues that they see as "closed", and leave any parts that, in their opinion, deserve further discussion or will be replied to in a later message.[citation needed] ==== How much to trim ==== Some style guides recommend that, as a general rule, quoted material in replies should be trimmed or summarized as much as possible, keeping only the parts that are necessary to make the readers understand the replies.[2] That of course depends on how much the readers can be assumed to know about the discussion. For personal e-mail, in particular, the subject line is often sufficient, and no quoting is necessary; unless one is replying to only some points of a long message.[2] In particular, when replying to a message that already included quoted text, one should consider whether that quoted material is still relevant. For example: >> [Mary:] Shall we meet this afternoon to discuss the >> marketing strategy? > > [Peter:] Perhaps, if we can get all the information we need. > Do we have the West Coast sales data yet? The LA office just sent them in. Joe The quote from Mary's message is relevant to Peter's reply, but not to Joe's reply. The latter could have been trimmed to > [Peter:] Do we have the West Coast sales data yet? The LA office just sent them in. Joe On the other hand, in some situations, any trimming or editing of the original message may be inappropriate. For example, if the reply is being copied to a third person who did not see the original message, it may be advisable to quote it in full; otherwise the trimmed message may be misinterpreted by the new recipient, for lack of context. Also, when replying to a customer or supplier, it may be advisable to quote the original message in its entirety, in case the other party somehow failed to keep a copy of it.
