On Saturday 16 January 2021 17:25:05 Steven D'Aprano via tde-users wrote: > Just a gentle reminder about bottom-quoting without trimming, which > combines all the disadvantages of top-posting with none of the > advantages. > > The message I replied to included *nine* levels of quoting, > approximately 200 lines worth, followed by a single response at the very > end. I had to page through six screens to get to the author's comment. > > Please everyone, remember to trim your quoting to managable levels, and > to use inline posting between paragraphs. (Some people call that "bottom > posting" as you respond at the bottom of each paragraph, but that term > is more correctly used for adding your own text at the very bottom of > the entire quoted message. Which is worse for the reader than > top-posting.) > > (I've done my best to remove any threading information from this email, > as I don't want to point the finger at any specific person.) This thought has occurred to me before, but anyway, here goes ... How about we just dispense with top posting altogether? About 5% of those who post here don't bother or don't remember not to top post; probably they are new to the list. It's annoying to most of the readers of the list, but for their different reasons. Some of us do our best not to top post, then others don't follow the rule and mess it up, anyway. Others bottom post, but don't trim the glut of replies on top of replies that accumulates in some threads, which makes it like an archaeological dig sometimes to find the tiny nuggets that are worth reading. If we just all went to top posting, because it's normal for most emails, and habit, then we wouldn't worry so much about it. It is no harder to read the replies backwards rather than forwards, since it's usually messy, anyway. Furthermore, I find that I have started bottom-posting by habit in my *other* [non-TDE mailing list] emails, which throws off some of my non-TDE recipients, who think I have mistakenly hit RESEND or whatever, and sometimes don't scroll down to find what I have written. All this could be eliminated if we just top-posted. Then the rule (observed or not) could be: Please trim the extra stuff that has accumulated at the bottom. But if they forget, most readers won't be bothered much, as they won't get that far. Bill ____________________________________________________ tde-users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Web mail archive available at https://mail.trinitydesktop.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
