Can someone explain why "bottom posting" is considered better than "top posting"...
I far prefer posts at the top, simply because the new information can be read easily and then, if it looks interesting, I can scroll through the history if I haven't been following the thread. If people post at the bottom I frequently don't bother scrolling down to read it. Posting at the bottom would be OK if people didn't insist on quoting all that's gone before.
Also, why do some people get so worked up about it? Does it cause problems with some news readers? - it seems OK with Outlook Express and that's freely available. (retires to fall-out shelter.....)
-- Dave S (The email account is a dummy for anti-spam purposes, please reply via the newsgroup) _________________
When you make a post to a newsgroup, it might be read by as many as 50 or
100 other people who subscribe to that newsgroup. It might be read within a few minutes, it might be read several days later. Any one of those individuals might want to make a comment about your post, so the thread can branch off in several directions. *A thread is not a sequential conversation*. That requires a certain degree of good manners and consideration towards other people.
What do you mean, good manners and consideration?
Remember that not everyone will have followed a thread from it's beginning. Someone may drop in on a thread when it's part way through. They won't have a clue about what has been said earlier, they will only see the particular message that they've chosen to read. That requires some rules for how you post messages.
What are those rules?
When you make a post in response to someone else's post, you may only be commenting about one or two details in that earlier post. It's good manners to snip out all the irrelevant stuff, without altering the sense of the original poster's (OP) comments. When you do that you usually show it by inserting where you have deleted their comments. You then add your comments underneath the OP's comments. Generally, this is called snipping, interleaving and bottom posting.
Who enforces those rules?
No one! They're a convention, primarily so that whoever reads your post sees the context in which they're written.
I see messages where someone has posted comments at the top, not the bottom. This seems quicker and easier, and my newsreader seems to place the curser at the top anyway. Why shouldn't I top post?
Remember that proper newsgroup posting is a consideration for others, to help subsequent readers of your post read your comments in their proper context. If you post your comments at the top and away from the previous poster's comments, then any subsequent reader will have to scroll through the whole post to try and make sense of yours and the previous poster's comments. It isn't so much about what is easiest for you, it's much more about what are good manners towards others.
What happens if I decide to carry on top posting?
Nothing, no one will come after you with a big stick, although you may get quite a lot of experienced poster making some very rude - flame - comments to you. Many experienced posters choose to totally ignore top posters, so your words of wisdom may never get read anyway. *The choice is yours.*
What about if I forget now and then?
We can all make occasional mistakes, you won't be heavily criticised for that, but as time goes on, you will find that proper posting style becomes second nature.
BTW, this is not allowed either. You should only quote as much as is needed for context. You shouldn't quote the entirety of a previous post (unless it is a couple of lines) and then add a small bit at the bottom.
Feel free to berate both top posters AND those unable to snip. Both are equally bad habits.
Now you've gone and done it...Hope you're proud of the monster thread you've spawned.
It's not about top v. bottom, it's about top v. *context* posting.
But how, then, does one reply to several different points in a post while still making sense?
Your loss/problem.
And people shouldn't quote all that's gone before - unless there's no other way of putting their point across.
Bottom posting is lazy, selfish, makes the thread impossible to follow, and from an archival point of view (do you use groups.google.com?) is extremely destructive.
I''m with you. I like top posters as it makes it faster to read and therefore more likely to comment on the return posting.
THis is becuase of Outlook Express showing a tree of messages such that you can read the original easily. Other newsreaders are not set up the same, which means [dive for cover] that OE has something better in it than other newsreaders.
It depends on whether the post is a conversation or a questions also..... nobody ever seems to comment that top posting works well for one, and bottom posting for the other.
Because it is much easier to follow the flow of the conversation. This may not matter if you reply to a single author post, but if you top post a reply to a layered post with multiple authors I have to scroll down to the bottom to find out what you might be responding to. Your comment will be out of sync in the conversation.
And you have thus hit upon another frequent bugbear, an inability to trim that which is not relevant. My server insists I do this and will not post messages that do not contain sufficient new content. As for not being bothered, I not infrequently refrain from giving advise to gratuitous top posters when they ask for it and I am in a position to give it. Much like I might ignore someone in the street if they were rude to me.
It simply makes it hard to follow the conversation since it is not in a sensible order.
Netscape does this just fine thanks. Although I've tried a lot of other popular newsreaders which don't appear to do it properly... I don't know about OE or Outlook, neither have permission to run on this system, that little program permissions tool is quite handy :-)
... except, of course, that this not only makes it impossible to follow a series of responses and to place responses in the context of previous comments, it also disregards the various standards and conventions that apply to Usenet.
[dive for cover] indeed ... you don't seem to know much about other newsreaders (Agent, which I'm using now, allows for thread-based display, as well as other options).
As an earlier response, the issue is not top- vs bottom- posting, its top- vs. contextual posting. Try responding to each of the points I've made here using your top-posted preference, and see how readable/understandable the results are.
I'll let others do that - my preference is to mix as follows.
I prefer for messages to be chopped into logical sections (as I am doing here), with responses to each section immediately following the query or issue. I find it much easier to follow than a long message with a long reply (top or bottom).
The other "advantage" is that whole sections of redundant information can be deleted from the reply.
It's personal preference stuff, mostly. Some people prefer net curtains, others hate them. Same with blinds and so on.
If a message is particularly long then it can take a while to download for people using a modem.
No need. You'll never get a consensus on posting preferences. We each like our own particular style, and everyone else's is considered bad.
Please search on google -- it isn't on-topic here. However, top and bottom posting are equally wrong. You quote each point in the posting you are following up, and place your response after that quoted text. You cut as much as you can from the from the posting you are following up -- you only include just enough so readers know which point you are following up. This is just such an example.
People get worked up about all sorts of things. I actually use top-posting as a good indicator of how naive the poster is, and as such find it remarkably useful. If I don't have time to read all the followups to a posting, I can quickly skip all the top- posted ones without reading them -- rarely do they have much valuable content as they never come from experienced contributors. Experienced contributors tend to know how to use usenet correctly and effectively.
Except that top posting is expressly forbidden by the group's charter. It isn't a matter of personal preference with both sides being equal, but a case of disregarding or obeying the rules.
Before you start typing, you should delete irrelevant parts of the quoted material. For that purpose it's more convenient to have the cursor at the top than the bottom.
"Arg" wrote | "Dave" wrote | > Can someone explain why "bottom posting" is considered better | > than "top posting"... | I''m with you. I like top posters as it makes it faster to read and | therefore more likely to comment on the return posting. | THis is becuase of Outlook Express showing a tree of messages such | that you can read the original easily.
But that doesn't always happen - I use OE and the original is often not directly above the reply. In fact it may have got expired off my system or the ISP newsserver or may even not have been received by my or the ISP because of imperfect propagation. The original may not be visible on Googlegroups or other archives if it's been X-No-Archive'd. Dealing with over 500 new postings a day means I might not even remember reading the original.
My OE displays about the first 20-24 lines of a posting without scrolling. I expect to be able to get the gist of a posting, including preceding discussion, within the first 20 lines. Anything more shows the writer isn't quoting properly.
Interleaving quote / response, quote / response makes terse responses to quoted text possible without duplication whilst maintaining comprehension.
And I find I can read messages very quickly on OE with one hand on the arrow key to move between unread postings and another hand on the wheelmouse to scroll within a posting. Having the attributions / references at the very top also makes it quick to pick out responses to my own postings.
In news:bivoo0$dk9v6$ snipped-for-privacy@ID-79399.news.uni-berlin.de, Dave typed: : Can someone explain why "bottom posting" is considered better than : "top posting"... : : I far prefer posts at the top, simply because the new information can : be read easily and then, if it looks interesting, I can scroll : through the history if I haven't been following the thread. If people : post at the bottom I frequently don't bother scrolling down to read : it. Posting at the bottom would be OK if people didn't insist on : quoting all that's gone before. : : Also, why do some people get so worked up about it? Does it cause : problems with some news readers? - it seems OK with Outlook Express : and that's freely available. : (retires to fall-out shelter.....)
-- Put an end to Outlook Express's messy quotes with this:
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