Hi Emily, I'm sorry that top posting seems to you a power play or the product of disregard for others. That really isn't why I top post. I believe that most everyone reading a message with subject "Re: top posting" likely has already read "top posting". (Those who have not are coming in late and ought not mind having to work a bit to catch up.) I view not making others scroll through the parts of your message that I've chosen to quote as more respectful of their time. My text is not above yours to put me above you in any grand sense, but simply to make the new contribution the very first thing people see. Bottom posting makes people work to go past what they have seen before. If someone receives say 200 email list messages a day, that's a lot of their time spent scrolling past what they've already read. With a top post, I can tell at a glance if I want to read more; with bottom, I've work to do before I can judge. Seems to me we agree on the goodness of being polite and respectful (and probably mom and apple pie, too!), but differ on which method we think best meets that goal. Best, Brian van den Broek On 3 Nov 2003 at 9:45, Emily L. Ferguson wrote: > 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. <SNIP> > 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. <SNIP> > 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 > -- Brian van den Broek brian.van_den_broek@mail.mcgill.ca
