This is why the prohibition against top-posting is so strongly documentedFor those that have lost track of what RFC1855 says, the relevant paragraph is:
and promoted. It IS the standard for one to many communication.
Can you point me to an RFC which says top posting is OK for one to many
communication? That's because its not.
- If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just
enough text of the original to give a context. This will make
sure readers understand when they start to read your response.
Since NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the
postings from one host to another, it is possible to see a
response to a message before seeing the original. Giving context
helps everyone. But do not include the entire original!There are other parts that discuss archiving and why this kind of summary is important -- think of your future readers who will thank you, it says (although I'm paraphrasing wildly).
RFC1855 (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html) -- and informational RFC by the way, not a standard of any kind -- is full of good advice about netiquette and it's well worth a read. You may not agree with everything it says -- I know I don't -- but it is well reasoned and informative and all the arguments that have been batted backwards and forwards in this thread are addressed by it. Read it. Understand it and then feel free to break the rules when you think it's useful :-)
Please, do read it if you haven't -- that's why I've given you the link. Bear in mind some of what it says is now a little dated since it was written almost eight years ago.
One thing that I would add -- if it's not in there -- is that if the tool you're using to read mail makes it difficult to, for example, scroll through a message to find the meat, find another one. Or experimentally hit the space bar to see what happens -- I remembered that and discovered that Mozilla does the "right thing" when you do that. Quite seriously though, if the UA you're using isn't up to snuff, find a different one or find out what feature yours has that you don't know about. Ask your friends what they use. Look at the headers of postings on this list to see what people use.
But please, read the RFC and don't condemn what it says out of hand. Bear in mind that the editor was summarising good practice and manners over the previous decade or two and most of what it says still holds today.
I'm off to actually read all of it now.
jch
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