On Dec 11, 2007 10:49 AM, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 11, 2007 at 08:43:44AM -0800, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> >
> > O.k. this might be a bit snooty but frankly it is almost 2008. If you
> > are still a top poster, you obviously don't care about the people's
> > content that you are replying to, to have enough wits to not top post.
>
> There are those who argue persuasively that emailing is more like letter
> writing than conversation, and that it is better to reply with one single
> set of paragraphs than with a set of replies interspersed with quotes.
This would be true if we were writing to each other with letters of
friendly correspondence. We generally are not, but instead are
discussing technical issues. By chopping up the original post into
bite sized pieces and interleaving our answers, we give context to our
responses.
> Moreover, under such circumstances, it is utterly silly to quote the entire
> original argument first, because the reader then has to plough through a
> long block of reproduced content to get to the novel stuff.
I do not believe anyone is arguing for including the entire previous
post. In fact, most netiquette guides quite clearly state you should
summarize the previous reponse instead of including it as one giant
blob.
> On a mailing list, perhaps one can argue that the conventions simply have to
> be followed.
The conventions exist for a reason, not unto themselves. It is far
easier to have a technical conversation with interleaved quoting than
with top or bottom posting.
> But I know I find it pretty annoying to get 36 lines of quoted
> text followed by something like, "No: see the manual, section x.y.z."
It is not made any better by having "No: see the manual, section
x.y.z" at the top of 36 quoted lines.
> I don't think top posting is always the crime it's made to be (and I get a
> little tired of lectures to others about it on these lists).
I agree. There are times it's just fine with me, like when someone is
posting a "Thanks!" message.
But when someone is asking a technical question, and someone has gone
to the trouble to interleave their answers so that they have context,
and then someone posts back, at the very top, "well what about if
change a to b?" And you have no idea what he means without reading
the whole thing, because there's no context.