Off topic: What is "top posting" ??

[Brad Peek]

What is "top posting" and why is it considered bad form?

 

[Cliff Cyphers]

This is top posting.

What is "top posting" and why is it considered bad form?

And this is bottom posting.

There are different etiquette guidelines for each list. Some of it's
personal opinion. I personally like bottom because when you read the
thread you can see where things fit together as far as the back and
forth and you see the big picture of the collaboration the thread brings.

 

[Joel VanderWerf]

This is, and it is so considered because many people find it confusing
to read the answer before the question.

 

[John Gabriele]

Is it because is it considered bad form that you came to this mailing list?

 

[Logan Capaldo]

What is "top posting" and why is it considered bad form?

Responding Like This.

What is top posting?

It's confusing and makes it harder to follow a thread.

 

[Brad Peek]

Is it because is it considered bad form that you came to this mailing
list?

Not sure I understand your question. I had read a post in this forum
where someone was asked not to top-post, and I had seen that term
elsewhere so I thought I'd ask about it. I trust the question itself
isn't considered bad form, else I'm hard pressed to figure out what is
and isn't bad form.

 

[Hal Fulton]

Not sure I understand your question. I had read a post in this forum
where someone was asked not to top-post, and I had seen that term
elsewhere so I thought I'd ask about it. I trust the question itself
isn't considered bad form, else I'm hard pressed to figure out what is
and isn't bad form.

The question is obviously fine, and I don't grasp
what John G is saying.


Hal

 

[Matt Todd]

Is it because is it considered bad form that you came to this mailing

The question is obviously fine, and I don't grasp
what John G is saying.

I don't grasp it either.

Thanks for asking, Brad: I didn't know, either, and I think it's good
to have these fundamental meta-questions asked every once in a while
to nudge the long-time users back to reality for a moment!

Cheers,

M.T.

 

[John Gabriele]

The question is obviously fine, and I don't grasp
what John G is saying.


Hal

Doh. I'm sorry to waste your time guys. I shouldn't have been so
obscure. I thought it might be humorous and slightly instructive to
have the Emacs Psychiatrist answer Brad's question in top-posting
form, and was waiting for someone to come back top-posted again with
something like: "Does it bother you that is it considered bad form
that I came to this mailing list?". A la:

| Earlier you said it's considered bad form?
|
| > No, I came here to find out...
| >
| > > Is it because it's considered bad form that you came to me?
| > >
| > > > Well, I was just wondering why it's considered bad form.
| > > >
| > > > > Why do you say is top posting ok?
| > > > >
| > > > > > Is top-posting ok?

---John

 

[Hal Fulton]

Doh. I'm sorry to waste your time guys. I shouldn't have been so
obscure. I thought it might be humorous and slightly instructive to
have the Emacs Psychiatrist answer Brad's question in top-posting
form, and was waiting for someone to come back top-posted again with
something like: "Does it bother you that is it considered bad form
that I came to this mailing list?". A la:

[snip snip]

Ahhh, I thought I detected Eliza in there.

No worries, I might have got it if I had had
less blood in my caffeine stream.


Hal

 

[Chad Perrin]

Responding Like This.

It's confusing and makes it harder to follow a thread.

I believe the canonical example goes a little something like this:

A. It reverses the normal flow of conversation.
Q. Why is it considered bad form?
A. It's posting the answer above the question.
Q. What is top posting?

 

[Dr Nic]

Is it because is it considered bad form that you came to this mailing
list?

He asked a meta-forum question in a forum for a language that supports
meta-programming. Makes perfect sense. Java forum readers couldn't have
dealt with the inherent multi-tiered complexity, for example.

 

[William Crawford]

I believe the canonical example goes a little something like this:

A. It reverses the normal flow of conversation.
Q. Why is it considered bad form?
A. It's posting the answer above the question.
Q. What is top posting?

You know, the problem I have with this answer is that in a forum, the
first post was posted first... And then the reply was posted, with the
first quoted. Before or after, it doesn't really matter, since I read
the first post first.

So maybe the example should be:

 

[Leslie Viljoen]

People should also realize that Outlook makes proper bottom posting so
tiresome that even the most ardent will soon give in and just
top-post. And some people are forced to use Outlook because their
workplace only provides an Exchange server and Windows XP. This is why
I use GMail mostly - and because it's actually faster to get a message
sent from my colleagues from Outlook over Gmail than from Outlook to
Outlook because for some reason checking mail in Outlook is extremely
slow.

If people have solved this problem other ways, I'd be interested in the details.

Les

 

[William Crawford]

This is not a "forum", it is Usenet. There are *many* different
reading environments, some of which are entirely different than
that presented in a "forum".

Forum or usenet (or mailing list), first is first. Any decent usenet
reader these days presents threads properly.

I think we're all guilty of ego-centrism here. We all assume 'most'
people are using this forum/list/newsgroup the same as we are.

I've read this through ruby-forum.com (my preference) and tin
(comp.lang.ruby) and I have not had any trouble understanding top or
bottom posted stuff.

This is not a "forum", it is Usenet. There are *many* different
reading environments, some of which are entirely different than
that presented in a "forum".

And some of them are entirely different than usenet. Bottom posting
like this is hard to read in some clients because there's nothing to
visually identify the added parts, other than the > in front. You have
to skim, and sometimes read, old information over again before you are
able to find the new information.

Neither way is perfect, and some people are going to choose the one you
don't like, or I don't like. That's just a fact of life, and not worth
complaining about anymore. The war on top-posting was a stalemate.

 

[Trans]

2) Prefix each line of quoted text with a '>' character, and
mark each level of quoted text with an initial attribution
line that identifies who authored each level. That results
in a long running exchange that follows this form:


My response to all of that goes here.

3) Not obvious from item 2) is that this format is applied at
a minimum to _paragraphs_, but often to sentences or even
just to individual lines or fragments. Very rarely should
there be multiple paragraphs retained as quoted text with
a comment at the bottom referencing anything more than a
paragraph above where it is placed.

I always wondered if an xml-like notation might catch on for this
instead. Yes, it's nice when your email client automatically adds the
'>'. And it look pretty good. But it certainly bites when that doesn't
happen or the lines get broken up in a odd manner. I would think
something like:

<quote author="Floyd L. Davidson">
2) Prefix each line of quoted text with a '>' character, and
mark each level of quoted text with an initial attribution
line that identifies who authored each level. That results
in a long running exchange that follows this form:
</quote>

Would be much easier for email clients to work with. They could easily
"pretty-print" these sections.

T.

 

[ara.t.howard]

I always wondered if an xml-like notation might catch on for this
instead. Yes, it's nice when your email client automatically adds the
'>'. And it look pretty good. But it certainly bites when that doesn't
happen or the lines get broken up in a odd manner. I would think
something like:

not at all. i use pine and/or mutt. vim is my editor for both. i can take
this section

instead. Yes, it's nice when your email client automatically adds the
'>'. And it look pretty good. But it certainly bites when that doesn't

highlight it visually using 'ctrl-v (movement keys)' and then format it with
'shift-f'. formatting is context sensitive and knows about email quoting,
line width, indenting, etc. therefore the output is

instead. Yes, it's nice when your email client automatically adds the '>'.
And it look pretty good. But it certainly bites when that doesn't

note that it knew what to do with the '>'

<quote author="Floyd L. Davidson">
2) Prefix each line of quoted text with a '>' character, and
mark each level of quoted text with an initial attribution
line that identifies who authored each level. That results
in a long running exchange that follows this form:
</quote>

Would be much easier for email clients to work with. They could easily
"pretty-print" these sections.

but you'd have to do something like this for literal xml:

&lt;quote author=&quot;Floyd L. Davidson&quot;&gt;

ick! ;-)

regards.

-a

 

[David Vallner]

People should also realize that Outlook makes proper bottom posting so
tiresome that even the most ardent will soon give in and just
top-post.

I can usually force myself to follow the conventions the other person
started. If there's anything more confusing than top-posting, it's when
you get two people stubborn (or inperceptive) enough to use different
styles.

More vexing in Outlook is the (maybe default only?) lack of properly
quoting previous messages. This makes more complex discussions at work
very, very annoying since there's no simple to let you differentiate
between quoted text and your reply if you decide to inline replies to
specific questions after them instead of just replying to a confusing
tangled barrage of questions with a confusing tangled barrage of spam.
Of course, you could use a different text colour, but that way lies madness.

People that don't delete irrelevant passages from quotes text considered
stabworthy too.

David Vallner

PS: I wonder if Terry Pratchett's Mrs. Cake character was a direct
reference to this practice...

 

[David Vallner]

I always wondered if an xml-like notation might catch on for this
instead. Yes, it's nice when your email client automatically adds the
'>'. And it look pretty good. But it certainly bites when that doesn't
happen or the lines get broken up in a odd manner. I would think
something like:

If it ain't broke...

It would also horribly, terribly break backwards compatibility - mail
clients that can't recognize the XML format would show it as such, and
while YMMV, I'm very, very loathe to reading XML.

David Vallner

 

[Jeff Pritchard]

Isn't the root of the disagreement the fact that some of us only use the
web portal and others choose to get the email version of the the list?

In a web forum setting, one typically reads down a thread from top to
bottom and only occasionally needs to reference the quoted stuff when
the context isn't clear from what they read up above.

I assume that when getting the new posting in an email it would be
frustrating to get a long answer out of context, followed by a quoted
question or part of somebody else's reply.

The real question is why isn't either the web version or the email
version clearly superior to everyone? The two are quite different
delivery systems, and yet there is no clear winner over time. We
continue to have VHS and Betamax for eternity. That's what strikes me
as odd.

jp