On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 23:41:01 -0800, Tom Mitchell wrote: > Top or bottom posting is not the issue, communication is. > > If I was tossed back on an old 300/150 baud modem I would love to see > top posting as the norm. If you want to follow many threads at once (also complex ones which may be not trivial to understand), you need quotes which maintain context properly. On average, a reply at the top which is ripped out of its context -- and which forces you to scroll down to the bottom and try to reconstruct the context by finding the relevant information in nested complete quotes of previous messages and list footers -- results in replies of worse quality. > As an old timer I still value it when done well. > > Operative phrase, "when well done". 99% of the top-posters fail to do it "well", IMO. > I am a person that happens to like > seeing information on the _first_ screen (30 lines). "Information"? 99% of the top-posters refer to some details found in the completely quoted previous message at the bottom. They fail to phrase their reply in a way you would not need the quote. > If all I see is > history it might hit page once, twice then 'd' it is. So do many knowledgable people if they have not dropped off these lists already (which is a pitty!). > However, on lists like this almost, > no one is on a 300 baud or slower modem, Fine. Let's make multipart/alternative and HTML plus "plain text" the rule. ;) Also think about the list server who must deliver superfluous quotes to thousands of subscribers. > no one keeps lots of threads handy and So? Examine the older archives a bit. Many of the people, who have had helped in many threads at once, no longer do this and are gone or dead silent. Top-postings have been the reason for several tiresome misunderstandings, where a top-poster was the culprit. > no one has a 'dumb' mail interface anymore. Still I need to page down to the bottom of a message in order to see whether any reply can be found there, too. Also, those not so "dumb" mail interfaces generate messages with overlong lines which appear pretty much unreadable here, because the recipient cannot enforce block-text on already preformatted overlong lines. -- Michael, who replies to well-formatted messages more often than to top-postings and complete quotes.
