Hi, I have a very strong reason for top posting and a very strong one for not agreeing too much bottom posting at all, and this is the fact that I am blind and if I need to read a bottom post, I need to read again and again the whole original message, even though most of the time I remember what was it about, and I don't like to lose so much time to read it again so many times.
I have read somewhere a Netiquette rule that advice top posting (I don't remember where, but could be on W3C site...) and the reasons for that rule were that: 1. Most of the times, the members of the list remember the subject of the original message, and those who don't remember it, can make that effort for scrolling down, because the most important part is not the original message, but the answer. 2. People with dissabiliteies, that access the computer reading line by line, will have to skip many rows sometimes in order to reach to the important part of the message, and very often that important part have just a single line, or two lines, and they might skip them if they read the text faster. 3. Top posting is much easier to be done for most of the members of a list, because they don't have to trim the original message very selective, but they can just hit "reply", start writing, then they can press page down once or a few times, or point with the mouse, and delete from that point to the end of the original message and that's all. If bottom posting, the original message need to be trimmed for not including signatures, advertising, and other unneeded things. Well, I guess these are the reasons Microsoft made their mail clients in such a way that the text cursor appears at the top of the "reply window" by default, and not by mistake, and let's don't forget that most computer users use MS Windows... Even though I prefer top posting for the reasons I have told you about, I also use sometimes bottom posting, and I also use answering point by point in the original message where is the case. I use bottom posting only in short threads, in which the members might not remember about the subject of the original message, or in messages that are hard to understand without reading the original message. If I answer something like: "Your problem can be solved by using the following code: ..." Most of the users won't understand what problem was that answer for, because on the lists we use to talk about problems all the time. But if I answer something like: "If you want to create a program for downloading and parsing a file, use the following code:..." Then I think that everyone will understand what is my answer for, and they don't need to read again the original message, because they even might remember that message. So I think the top posting is preferred by users for a very good reason, but I also think that we should try to admit that other members of the list have other preferences, and try not fighting for that. Cheers. Teddy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jason Wong" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2004 5:02 AM Subject: Re: [PHP] List Etiquette On Sunday 19 September 2004 07:52, Robert Cummings wrote: > But definitely there's not global consensus. I really shouldn't be indulging you as it's pretty obvious you're only here for a vigorous debate (that's my euphemism for an argument - the not so nice meaning of argument). The OP asked for the pros and cons of top posting vs bottom posting. I responded with some reasons why top posting is bad. What did you come up with? -- Jason Wong -> Gremlins Associates -> www.gremlins.biz -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
