On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 8:16 AM, Aditya Kapil <blue...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Doesn't answer the question as to why top-posting is bad netiquette / > etiquette. Are IT guys just lazy scrollers? Or have they some secret > knowledge of techie anachronismic inefficiencies that we mere mortals are > not aware of? > I see you have chosen not to follow my suggestion of setting aside your visceral reactions to people that advocate a particular style of posting. Be that as it may... Top posting used to be considered bad etiquette because it was perceived as laziness on the part of the poster. Top posting shifts the cognitive load from the writer to the reader. This is not too big a problem when the email thread in question is being exchanged between a few people. But is perceived to be inconsiderate when the load is imposed on newsgroups/mailing lists (such as silklist) with large readerships. When there are intense discussions with nuanced arguments with a lot of back and forth happening, I find the quality of arguments in interleaved posts to be higher than the quality of top posts. Top-posted replies generally (and I say generally, because there are notable exceptions to the rule such as bonobashi's posts) have the tendency to pick one or two arguments being presented and shooting off on tangential directions (See: "secret knowledge", "talking down", etc.). Interleaved replies, on the other hand, tend to lead to longish arguments with lots of back and forth about each item being addressed. I urge you to go back to the Acquavit thread and test my contention. That thread has a good mixture of interleaved replied and top-posted replies. Thaths
