OK this is how top posting comes across to me:
When you top post you stop conversation and draw attention to yourself.
You begin by superimposing what YOU have to say on TOP of what the
other person has to say, rather than showing that you've considered
the details of their message and can respond to parts of it.
Then you place your entire message above theirs without deleting
theirs, thus doubling or trebling the size of the complete post
(another rude thing to do to those who either store or have to pay by
the time unit to download) thus reinforcing the superiority of your
message in their mind.
In addition, by placing your message above theirs you inconvenience
all who might not have been following the entire train of thought,
making it necessary for them to scroll up and down throughout the
message to find out what you're referring to.
Finally, the effect is to bring conversation to a complete halt,
leaving you on TOP.
Doesn't surprise me at all that this sort of default came from Mr.
Gates. He's got all these techniques for argument down cold and they
permeate his system.
To me, this is jerk behavior. Power play behavior. It's not what
this list is about. Ideally email is a mechanism for conversation.
In fact, its capacity to aid conversation is one of the reasons that
people are giving up writing letters.
The solution? Think of email as conversation, not an opportunity to
dominate or get the last word in an argument.
--
Emily L. Ferguson
mailto:elf@cape.com
508-563-6822
New England landscapes, wooden boats and races, press photography
http://www.vsu.cape.com/~elf
