[Asterisk-Users] Re: Top posting

Tom Ivar Helbekkmo
Thu, 11 Nov 2004 02:37:43 -0000

George Gardiner <asterisk@georgej.demon.co.uk> writes:

> So that I can understand the almost religious fervour on this point
> could someone please explain to me why top posting is so hated!!

Because there's such an enormous amount of communication one would
like to take part in, and not enough time.  The easier it is to
quickly discover a) whether each item is interesting, and b) what is
the exact context of the item, and of its constituent parts, the more
interesting material we can actually read.  Therefore, "top posting"
and "bottom posting" are equally bad; the ideal is an easily readable
text that's placed into its proper context by short quotes of the
relevant bits of previous communication.  (Note: *short* quotes.  If
the reader wants the full text of the previous message, retrieving
that message takes but a moment, so there's no need to quote it all.)

For my own part, I have taken to ignoring anything that is badly
formatted, top posted, bottom posted, or otherwise makes it difficult
to quickly get into the flow of the communication.  My default is to
move on; only if your posting quickly establishes that it is, in fact,
interesting to me, will I read it.  To put it bluntly: if you can't be
bothered to make an effort to communicate, what you say can't be very
important.  ;-)

-tih
--
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo, Senior System Administrator, EUnet Norway Hosting
www.eunet.no  T +47-22092958 M +47-93013940 F +47-22092901 FWD 484145