2009/7/9 Tony Marston <tony@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: > Sometimes I use bottom posting, sometimes I use top posting, and sometimes I > use middle posting. It depends on the circumstances. If a post contains > several points that need separate responses, then I put my response under > each point, and do not accumulate all at the bottom as this would make it > difficult to associate an answer with a question. > > The fact that some people do not view a thread until nearly the end is > irrelevant. If a thread has 30 posts it would make the last post unreadable > if it contained everything from the start. Have you seen a post with 30 > levels of indenting for each different post? That is why most newsreaders > and email clients group messages by conversation/thread so that you can step > through each post individually. Each post contains just the response so that > you don't have to scroll through huge volumes of text in order to pick out > the new message. Sometimes the only part of the previous post you leave in > is the part for which you are supplying an answer so as to avoid confusion. > > Where I put my answers depends on the context, so saying that IT MUST ALWAYS > BE AT THE BOTTOM doesn't wash with me. Quoting http://php.net/reST/php-src/README.MAILINGLIST_RULES... 3. Do not top post. Place your answer underneath anyone you wish to quote and remove any previous comment that is not relevant to your post. That does not say "IT MUST ALWAYS BE AT THE BOTTOM". It says, quite usefully IMHO, that you should quote relevant parts of previous posts and place your response below them. That leaves scope for multiple responses in a single message, each with the relevant part of the previous post quoted. I thought of a better analogy. You ever been on the London Underground? There's a rule that says you stand on the right-hand side of escalators. This has no benefit to you, the one who stands there while the elevator does all the work, but it means those of us who want to walk up the escalator can do so without having to ask everyone to move out of the way. The benefit of this rule is to other people not you, but does that make it a bad rule? I reckon it's the same with the way you arrange your messages to this list. Top-posting is a lazy and selfish way to "contribute" to the list, especially when you know what the rule/convention is. It's worth noting that bottom-posting without efficient quoting is just as bad IMHO as top-posting. Anyway, it's clear that you're not willing to do the polite thing on this issue, so I don't see any point in continuing to discuss it. -Stuart -- http://stut.net/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
