Steve Mynott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > their mail clients use "top quoting". Did your friends do usability > studies? I did and asked a non-technical user in the pub about this > and they prefered top posting.
'Top quoting' is a mindset I think. When I hit followup with quoting, Gnus popped up a message window with the cursor placed nicely at the top of the quoted message, where it was easy for me to scroll through the quoted material excising the stuff that wasn't relevant before adding my comments. People who blame Outlook for doing the same thing would appear to be missing the point. Also, taking the example of an intelligent user who isn't technical, Gill really doesn't like Usenet style quoting; she finds it confusing and annoying. Her preference is to have a straightforward reply at the top of the message, where she doesn't have to scroll through irrelevant crap that she's already read, but can, if she wants to, scroll down and refer to the original message. I, of course, disagree. But hers is a considered opinion and I respect it. Telling her she's flat out wrong is not really an option. Telling her that she will probably annoy any long time news and email users with this kind of quoting is fine, she tends not to swap mail with such people. But dammit people (This is, of course addressed to more than just Steve), take a chill pill would you. It's not the end of the world if someone doesn't quote how you want them to. And hectoring them *really* isn't going to help. Makes me wonder why I bothered to contribute really... -- Piers
