[AccessD] OT: Why not reply at top of message

On 6 Aug 2004 at 10:18, Kath Pelletti wrote:

> Here's a Friday rant - is there a reason that people are replying to
> emails and putting their response at the bottom of the message instead
> of at the top? It's so much harder to quickly read through - you have
> to scroll down and find the response.
> 
> I know that sometimes you have to do this when you are replying to
> different *parts* of the message - but otherwise - what the reason?

Let me start by saying that I'm sorry for resurrecting a dead thread, 
but I just need to add my $0.02 worth to it, now that I'm back from 
vacation.

The main reason for bottom posting is netiquitte. It's only since OE 
and OL became as wide spread as they are that top posting became 
popular.

Most folks, when top posting (and I'm guilty of it when I post from 
work) don't bother to snip ANYTHING in their reply. You get multiple 
copies of the mailing list fotter, plus any other footer that 
outgoing that mail servers add.

Let's take a couple of extreme examples.

1) When I got back from vacation, I had an e-mail from the list 
software telling me that a post was held because it was too big. It 
was a reply to a thread and it was OVER 40K, for 2 short lines of 
text. It include 10, yep TEN copies of the AccessD list footer. Not 
to mention the fact that the 2 short lines of reply had nothing to do 
with then 8 previosly FULLY quoted emails. The only one that was 
relevant was the most recent one. A bottom poster would have gotten 
rid of all the extraneous stuff.

2) Another example of this is a post in this thread. A top post that 
is only 3 lines long that is over 10K. That is even bigger than 
Stuart's large bottom post e-mail, which was mostly new content and 
only weighed in at 9.1K.

Then On 6 Aug 2004 at 11:42, Kath Pelletti wrote:

> Following the same logic - when you write a system with a continuous form
> - do you display the *latest* records at the top - or make them scroll all
> the way down to see the latest data?
 
Nope. It goes at the bottom. Oldest at the top. Newest at the bottom. 
Just like everything else I do. I need context, the older stuff, 
before I can understand the new stuff.

> on the Internet can always be open for reasonable debate. I guess the
> question is - what is the netiquette for AccessD on this topic?

There isn't any netiquitte for top/bottom posting, nor is there any 
for trimming irelevant material. It's all left up to the individual.

Then On 6 Aug 2004 at 12:31, you wrote:

> the result is going to be that everyone starts bottom posting and I'll
> bitterly regret raising the topic!!

Never regret doing anything that causes everyone to examine why they 
do what they do.

-- 
Bryan Carbonnell - carbonnb at sympatico.ca
A pat on the back is only a few inches from a kick in the butt.