On 2/9/19 9:46 AM, L A Walsh wrote:
If a list is a conversational list where people think everyone
reads everything, then maybe chronological might be better, but
even many forums will show you the newer messages first.
The behavior/display of a list of messages does not have to be the same
as the behavior within each message.
Does that help or make sense, or should I have read through the next
700 messages to see if you found a solution to you situation.
While I don't know of any forum that does threading, most email programs
do, so replies to a request for help SHOULD be listed directly below it
in most email programs. (certainly true in (most of) the ones I use.)
But it could be very confusing if people always started at the
beginning of their email and read downwards.
Another part of the etiquette of bottom posting lists is to trim what
you quote down to what you are answering/replying to. [Normally I would
use ... or "snip" but here I think I've kept enough for context.] What
"I" find really annoying is those lists where people with post a reply,
without quoting ANY of the original question - so you get messages like
"Click the third link on that page." with no context. That's possibly
OK if you see it displayed right under the first message, but quite
meaningless otherwise. I agree that I don't want to scroll through
pages of previously read stuff to see the new content, but if it's not
relevant to the "current" message, why not trim it out?
You can manage long discussions by either having the entire history in
one file/message, or by keeping the entire list of messages and keeping
each message short and to the current point. In the first case, it may
be easier to top-post new content, but then you have no reason to keep
old messages, as long as nothing does get trimmed. I think difficulties
arise when mixing the two approaches, which is probably inevitable with
email lists which get archived and even more so for cases like usenet,
where you can either post or email.
I generally consider it as "local custom." Some lists/forums want one,
some want the other. As long as it's made clear, why not follow the
requested style? (Another way to look at is as religion, which suggests
there is little point trying to change people's minds.)
Jack
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