On Sat, 2004-09-18 at 18:11, Jason Wong wrote: > On Sunday 19 September 2004 05:37, Andre Dubuc wrote: > > > After googling 'Web Etiquette, Top Posting', I still am puzzled why some > > people on this list insist that top posting is bad form, rather than > > personal preference. The arguments seem to be balanced on either side. > > - Top posting means one cannot reply point by point like I'm doing here.
I think the argument was top posting versus bottom posting. Not top posting versus interlacing. If you have no need to reply point to point then there is no reason I can see why top posting is unsuitable. > - Top posting (usually) leaves a whole load of crap at the bottom of the post > which the person doing the top posting is (invariably) too lazy to trim. Bad > for everyone on the list and an ongoing waste of bandwidth and space on the > archives. Plenty of people bottom post without trimming. > - Top posting means if you've jumped into the middle of a thread you would > have to scroll backwards and forwards to figure out what was going on. When I'm reading about one topic and a reference is made to another topic, I don't want to read all about the reference. If I do, I'll go read the history... the post quoted below a top post is generally history, and many poeple will read it if they find they don't hav enough information from the top post. Why should I read and re-read over and over again just because someone is bottom posting. More often than not, people scroll past the quote and just read the bottom post. Now if you top post, I don't need to scroll. > > Checking the list's archives, I noticed that those who object to top > > posting almost invariably top-post their objection (perhaps for added > > emphasis, who knows). > > When I do it it's for the emphasis. So it's ok to top post when emphasizing your response? ;) > > Further, after searching the list's archives on the subject, I noted that > > the archives are organized by latest response => oldest (the original > > message); that is, the archives, in effect 'top-post' all threads: latest > > first (on top of the list) and the oldest (at the bottom of the list). > > It seems you're confused. The way the posts are sorted has no bearing on > contents of the individual posts. Most archives allow you to sort the list of > posts in various ways. > > > Seems to me much easier to scan the Subject, see how it's developing by > > reading the reply on the top, rather than have to wade through even snipped > > old material. > > And if you jumped into the middle of the thread, how would you know what was > going on without scrolling down to find out? Well i would do exactly that... scroll down... is that so hard? > Wouldn't you agree that it's easier to read something point by point whereby > you can easily see the context, instead of reading a sentence at the top of > the post then scrolling down to find out what that sentence was about in the > context of the original post? Yes, but once again this isn't bottom posting, point by point is interlacing which is completely different. > > I've been on this list, on-and-off, for a few years, and somehow I must > > have missed the discussion on the unwritten rule of bottom-posting. Perhaps > > someone could enlighten me with a url? > > I don't have a URL but I'm sure if you search the archives thoroughly you will > find several intensive discussions on this subject. I'll say no more on this thread, I just like to ensure the pro-top-posters get heard along with the pro-bottom-posters. I strongly believe all of this IS indeed personal preference. I've even seen a message where you (Jason) have top posted and it wasn't about top posting :) Cheers, Rob. -- .------------------------------------------------------------. | InterJinn Application Framework - http://www.interjinn.com | :------------------------------------------------------------: | An application and templating framework for PHP. Boasting | | a powerful, scalable system for accessing system services | | such as forms, properties, sessions, and caches. InterJinn | | also provides an extremely flexible architecture for | | creating re-usable components quickly and easily. | `------------------------------------------------------------' -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
