I was a top poster before it was cool, and before Outlook. One man's rudeness is anothers... well... politeness. Users with E-mail clients that use text preview, especially if only a few lines, benefit from top posting content. It makes perusing relevant messages a little easier on a smartphone or mobile device. Certainly the vast majority of email I receive is sent in that manner. Often I don't even read so called 'bottom posters' because it is too much effort to find the relevant text. I find top posting ludicrously easy to follow in comparison. But that's me. They are also often the same people who complain about HTML email because of bandwidth concerns or formatting or something. You control what enters your inbox, not the sender. Get over it.
But I think people should put their reply text wherever they feel it suits them, or where they feel their intended audience will view it best. The only rudeness I see is trying to suggest that formating an email reply is rude if not done to your specifications. RFC1855 needs about a decade's worth of upgrading. Or maybe there is a new one; I'm not certain. I do know this top/bottom posting discussion has been going on for more than a decade and it remains as amusing and as divisive as ever. Which is more rude, the couple in the following article or the bus driver? Goth who walks fiancée on a leash is banned by bus driver who told him: 'No dogs allowed' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id= 509713&in_page_id=1770 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of der Mouse Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 7:19 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [funsec] Test - do not respond, I have to use Outlook so I have enough problems, already... > And it's about time the old farts got over their indignation at top > posting, anyway. It's become common usage, and really most logic > against top posting was derived out of limited view 80x24 terminal > screens and Usenet. Logic? It's _rudeness_, not illogic, that bothers me. Top-posting is saying "my taking a few seconds to think about what I'm replying to and extract the relevant bits is more important than your taking a few seconds (or more, especially when the history trail is long) (multiplied by the number of readers, making it particularly egregious for list mail) to try to figure out what I'm talking about". That's arrogant and thus rude. Logic and screen size have nothing to do with it. > Top posting is acceptable and common these days. Just as much so as any other form of rudeness. There. I extracted the *relevant* bits of your message, rather than making readers (a) bounce around, visually if they're lucky to have a large enough window, via some kind of scrolling mechanism if not, and (b) try to guess which part, if any, I'm responding to in what I write. Perhaps politeness and thinking of your readers is not part of your culture. In that case, well, don't go away mad, just go away; I'll keep my old-fart politeness, thankyewverymuch. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML [EMAIL PROTECTED] / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list. _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
