(e-mail address removed)
wrote on 10/02/2004 10:20 PM:
You've extrapolated quite creatively from the four words you've quoted,
however I'm afraid not terribly logically. My statement was essentially
that if you desire an answer, you'll increase your chances of a good one
by employing posting techniques which facilitate comprehensive reading. I
never intended to express that one can expect an answer if they ask a
question - my apologies if that's the message that was inadvertently sent.
What people want is not always what they get. Or they get nothing. It
is
not guaranteed that anyone will get anything in a newsgroup.
Indeed. But if they want to get the best odds, they need their message
easily understood by the reader.
You may want bottom posting, someone else may want an answer to a
question,
both of those desires may not get met in a newsgroup.
In short, your analogy equating bottom-posting to wanting an answer to a
question is flawed.
Desiring an answer is largely a selfish endeavor, and I don't mean that
disparagingly. While others who search the archives might benefit from the
discussion, accurate responses are largely going to benefit the asker.
However, if the poor sap searching the archives finds it difficult to sort
the order of speakers due to confused posting, no one else is really
helped. And certainly the posters in the thread will have greater
difficulty following the flow of ideas.
Conversational-order posting is, by contrast to wanting a correct answer,
not selfish. It is desired to enable readers to more easily digest the
content. It's (potentially) a little more work by one person to save a lot
of work by others who may be able to teach you something valuable.
The desires of people are irrelevant to what actually happens in a
newsgroup.
From a realist's standpoint, there's no guarantee you'll ever be treated
fairly. We still aspire to a culture where respect regularly happens,
however. One form of respect is showing awareness that the folks who could
provide a helpful response do so in their free time at no cost to you. A
good way to demonstrate that awareness is to organize the post carefully
to maximize readability.
Consider, also, that the main topic of alt.html is website authoring,
which is essentially publishing content for download to a myriad of user
agents. Being good at organizing content in a post is certainly relevant
to the goals of web authoring, isn't it?
