"Andrew Sullivan" <ajs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > I would argue that this message is harder to read than if I'd just replied > at the top. It's pointlessly long -- but without including everything, you > wouldn't have all the context, and you might have missed something. We're not goldfish, we can remember the topic of discussion for at least a few hours. But what you're touching on here is that the real reason newcomers to the internet favour top-posting: their mail user agents suck. If you have a threaded mail reader you can always go and reread the original messages for context. Copying the entire message thread backwards on the end of every message is just a terrible way to emulate a threaded mail reader for people who have bad tools. Seriously, do you have any trouble following the discussion even though I only clipped two sentences of your message? If you did would you have any trouble finding the original message to reread it? Top-posting makes perfect sense if you start from the broken place of assuming you need to copy the entire thread into every message. It's a bit like saying "but officer I had to speed to keep up with the guy I was tailgating!" -- Gregory Stark EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com Get trained by Bruce Momjian - ask me about EnterpriseDB's PostgreSQL training! ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
