On 02/13/10 08:33, Troll/Idiot wrote: > We're not talking about books, but rather posts on an email list. <snip>
Until now I've stayed out of this discussion because I feel I've already made my views known, but your choice in inviting people to engage in ad hominem attacks[0] really rubbed me wrong. Which, when threaded properly or listed in the archives, reads like a book (or anything else you read from the top to the bottom, not the reverse). Even email clients (and web based providers aside from GMail) by default list the newest email at the bottom of the list and only with a change in configuration is this behavior any different. Thunderbird (my preferred email client) as well as several other sane mail readers (read as: ones that support proper message threading), when you select threading, always put the latest email /below/ the previous one in the thread (with indentation to better show relationship). That's also how it works in the list archives, which most people on this list are concerned about. And whether it be posts on an email list or a book, people read from TOP to BOTTOM. Not BOTTOM to TOP. If I join a mailing list and the first mail I receive is top posted (without proper snipping below) I have to read everything below that response BEFORE I have to scroll back to the TOP to read that response for it to make /any/ sense. That is what is at issue here. For someone coming in at the middle of a discussion, or reading this from the archives online, responses need to be properly interleaved (or in this case at the bottom since I'm only responding to one of your points and ignoring the rest) to make the most logical sense without forcing J. Random Stranger to hunt through that or previous documents to try and make sense of what is going on. In that regard, top-posting becomes a HURDLE and HINDRANCE rather then being at all helpful to anyone but the person who was too lazy to move his cursor around the page before answering. Top-posting: really bad bottom-posting: still bad, but not as bad as top-posting and generally only horrible without proper snipping. Interleaved responses: ideal and best I've not been around the Internet near as long as some of these other users (I think one said since 1981 he's been around) having only joined the community in 1997, but even I was able to quickly learn why it's bad to top-post and bottom-post (without at least snipping everything else that isn't relevant) and why interleaved responses were best. Anyway, I have somewhere to be today and this will likely be my only response to the topic. Any responses sent directly to me might or might not be read (or responded to) [0]: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html -- Yours In Christ, PIT Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
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