Re: Problem!

Michael T. Richter wrote:
On Sat, 2006-04-02 at 12:50 +0200, Ari Torhamo wrote:
It's been about being clever too and accepting things that work better.

I'll accept that when I see pure, rigorous, logical proof--untainted by
obvious elevation of personal preference to specious "fact"--which
demonstrates conclusively that bottom-posting "works better" than
top-posting. (Hint: this is not possible.)

True, it is not possible to prove that, but it is also not possible to prove that you exist, so I don't see how your argument is relevant. However, when in the company of other people, human social intercourse dictates that one follows the etiquette of the group and situation. Common netiquette asks that people bottom post and snip unanswered parts of the discussion, so that, while a message may contain many many questions, responses and responses of responses are of the form:

>> Question 1
> Answer 1
Response 1

>> Question 2
> Answer 2
Response 2

>> Question 3
> Answer 3
Response 3

as if each question was originally in its own post, rather than:

Response 1
Response 2
Response 3

> Answer 1
> Answer 2
> Answer 3

>> Question 1
>> Question 2
>> Question 3

This symmetry between multiple questions in a post, and multiple questions each in separate posts, shows that bottom posting is almost equivalent to organising questions in their own threads, and sorting by thread, but with the additional connection of being in just one thread. Top posting, however, is almost equivalent to sorting by date, but with the references to the parent posts automatically brought in to the display.

In a one-to-one conversation, top posting is probably the most useful. In an archived discussion group, however, date is mostly unimportant. I would say, regardless of preference, bottom posting is almost always best for an archived mailing list (if it is an English list). This is because the new reader will need to read the history, which is naturally done top to bottom.

I think the most important principle is that a group uses one convention so that a reader can expect the same form in any chosen mail and thus use the group efficiently. If that is top-posting, it doesn't matter too much, since you will get into a mode where you can rapidly read through the hundreds of lines of history to find what it is that is being replied to at the top of the message.

--
Tristan Wibberley


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