-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi Kenneth,
@17-Jan-2003, 11:45 -0500 (16:45 UK time) Kenneth S. Rhee said: > Agreed. ... <snip> <moderator> Note: This moderator's interjection is a note to all readers and not just to the person being replied to, even if their post may have instigated this reply. Please don't feel singled out Kenneth. There is an increase in "top posting" (see below for stock lecture) and a consequent lack of trimming. Please try to pay attention to the basic trimming requirements of this list and try to keep postings conversational. Kenneth's posting included the list footers from the previous message. That's always a good indicator that the quotes were more than just contextual. On another list I saw a great way of looking at it - list posts should have a signal to noise (new contribution to old quote) ratio of no worse than 75%. This post was down at under 10%. I'd also like to point out that the original posting was almost entirely echoed in the subject line - that's a bit of a nono too, although it's not in the list rules as such. Just common sense really. </moderator> ** Stock essay about top posting. ** Top posting means that you put the cursor at the top of a reply and type everything you want to say there. Top posted replies make messages harder to read than they should be. When you are having a private conversation and you know what you're saying to an individual top posting has a certain validity (I still don't do it - I don't find it at all pleasant to read that way, but this isn't about my personal preferences). When you are in an environment where many readers and many topics are present at once, you force everyone to read your reply text (because it's at the top, it's seen first), think to themselves "What's that about then?", scroll down to read the quotes for context, think "Oh, I see... now I know what it's about, does that change anything in what I read first?", and scroll back up to read what you wrote in the light of improved context. It's much easier for the writer, yes. But email should be designed for the reader. A reply works better broken down conversationally: ___________________________________________________________________ > Someone makes this point.. (snipped) A reply is made with this response. >> A point made two messages back (snipped) > and this was said to make someone think Which leads to this summary. ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ Only contextually relevant text remains. It is easy to read and follow the conversation without having to scroll up and down or think too hard or read more than once. Also, since the text is trimmed to the bare bones to facilitate the conversation, there's no worry about excess or untrimmed quotes. - -- Cheers -- .\\arck D Pearlstone -- List moderator TB! v1.63 Beta/4 on Windows 2000 5.0.2195 Service Pack 2 ' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1rc1-nr1 (Windows 2000) iD8DBQE+KDhEOeQkq5KdzaARAp8aAJ97rMiRkKbnfkQQ1kvdIOt2PEerpQCbB3/g XUH74BC3YRfdgZ4837pjNnQ= =WHiF -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ________________________________________________ Current version is 1.62 | "Using TBUDL" information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
