Off topic: What is "top posting" ??

[Mike Woodhouse]

More vexing in Outlook is the (maybe default only?) lack of properly
quoting previous messages.

IIRC, there is an option lurking somewhere to make this
"better-behaved". I can't check just now because (a) we have Lotus
Notes at work (which on its own can make you love Microsoft) and (b) I
have a long job ahead recovering my home desktop from a failed hard
drive. Sob.

Mike

 

[William Crawford]

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?

Worse, there's also the newsgroup comp.lang.ruby. So there's not only 3
methods of accessing this list, there's many different clients for 2 of
the forms.

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.

Some email programs (including gmail) now make threads from replies now.
But even without that, most people that top post don't have hugely
complex replies with no context in the message. And if i find I -need-
more context, it's quoted below for a quick glance. So it just doesn't
bother me.

Maybe I just treat email/newsgroup stuff like it's non-professional and
won't always make sense. If I expected perfect grammar, spelling and
full thoughts, I'd probably be annoyed at quite a few people.

 

[Austin Ziegler]

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".

No, in fact, it isn't. What you're actually reading is the result of a
gateway. The primary source for this forum (ruby-forum.com/ruby) or
this newsgroup (comp.lang.ruby) is a mailing list:
(e-mail address removed).

Please don't pretend that either the forum or Usenet is prime here.
They're alternative views on the mailing list, but both are gatewayed
to and from the mailing list.

Forum users: yes, mailing list people and Usenet people get pissed off
with top posters (r) contextless posters because we may *not* have the
originating message immediately in front of us, even with a threading
newsreader or mail reader.

-austin

 

[David Vallner]

I
have a long job ahead recovering my home desktop from a failed hard
drive.

Happened to me. Frequently around end-of-semester time for added
hilarity. (Yes, I know I should have backed up assignment code.)

The last time in April. TWICE. (Luckily, the data was still there, the
drives just refused to boot.) Then I lived two months off Knoppix
waiting for inept PC vendors to assemble me a new computer. I feel your
pain.

However, no breathing on me. Maybe it's contagious and I could still be
vulnerable.

David Vallner

 

[David Vallner]

Some email programs (including gmail) now make threads from replies now.
But even without that, most people that top post don't have hugely
complex replies with no context in the message. And if i find I -need-
more context, it's quoted below for a quick glance. So it just doesn't
bother me.

Still, it's proper form to think of people that feel uncomfortable
skipping around a message to get the context, and don't like keeping the
whole thread or quoted post in their heads to find out who was answering
to what where. Remember that this is a free-time activity for most of
the participating and they don't necessarily want to have to exercise
full concentration because someone asking for help (which is the
prevalent topic of most threads, at least originally) couldn't bother
keeping the text concise.

Maybe I just treat email/newsgroup stuff like it's non-professional and
won't always make sense. If I expected perfect grammar, spelling and
full thoughts, I'd probably be annoyed at quite a few people.

Weirdly enough, I do expect, enforce, and am a general bitch over those
on here. (Or at least a honest attempt - the "not my native language"
excuse looks so out of place when your post didn't contain a single
capital letter.) The topic of this mailing list is a serious one, and
that warrants an at least somewhat mature approach to posting here in my
opinion. (Random outbreaks of inanity notwithstanding - mature, not
stick-up-butt.)

David Vallner

 

[David Vallner]

If
everyone had a perfectly-threaded reader, that would work fine, as it does
on well-threaded forums where quoting previous messages is usually optional
and the UI handles visually organizing posts where appropriate.

No. This requires flipping between messages. This is slow to do and
confusing - I'm probably not the only person that has problems reading
two separate documents at once, related as they may be.

The idea that every email should provide full
context or even require partial context is asinine, and I have no pity for
someone missing a message in the sequence.

So, instead of the writer doing a digest of the context, you'd rather
have all the readers do it. Uh-huh.

Your flawed client is not my
problem.

Your lack of courtesy for your communication partners however is mine.

My time is infinitely more important to me than yours.

Yes. And everyone fails to care spending his time, infinitely more
valuable than yours for him, to do what you can't be bothered to.

I call courtesy again. I realise that the time of others is infinitely
valuable to them, and therefore follow what the generally preferred form
is out of respect to them.

David Vallner

 

[Hal Fulton]

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.

Very true! Sometimes it's not just painful, but *impossible* to
edit correctly.

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

Yes, please share. (Though I only use Outlook at work nowadays.)


Hal

 

[Reid Thompson]

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

http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/
will remedy Outlooks crud...

 

[Chad Perrin]

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.

Speak for yourself. I assume that people should be accomodated in the
most reasonable manner possible. Ultimately, the most potentially put
out by top-posting are the blind, who (using screen readers) would end
up with an unnavigable mass of out-of-order text. I'm not blind, and I
have no other reason to use a screen reader, but that doesn't mean I
shouldn't accomodate them. Luckily, I can accomodate them AND suit my
own preferences, since I find having to start reading at the bottom and
work my way upward to be annoying.

Et cetera.

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.

Yes, we can all understand even inline top posting, but it's really sort
of annoying nonetheless.

And yes, I really have seen inline top posting before. Thankfully, not
on this list. It was awful.

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.

Wait . . . you mean that greater-than symbols as indicators of old text
(like in this email) aren't a useful clue to you?

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.

Read the rules set forth for ruby-talk. It may be sort of a stalemate
in general, but one should make an effort to follow the conventions of
the list/forum/whatever being used, even when arguing about top-posting
there.

As quoted from the ruby-talk (aka comp.lang.ruby) FAQ section detailing
the list's/newsgroup's/forum's posting guidelines:

# PLEASE NOTE! Include quoted text from previous posts before your
responses. And selectively quote as much as is relevant.

# Use plain text; don't use HTML, RTF, or Word. Most mail or newsreader
programs have an option for this; if yours doesn't, get a (freeware)
program or use a web- based service that does.

# Include examples from files as in-line text; don't use attachments.

Even though I use the mailing list interface, I have no illusions that
this is a newsgroup first. The mailing list (and especially the forum)
interface is provided as a courtesy, as I understand it. As far as I
know standard usenet etiquette, I'll try to observe it. Luckily for us,
these rules are spelled out at:
http://hypermetrics.com/rubyhacker/clrFAQ.html#tag22

Luckily for me in particular, these posting guidelines exactly suit my
preferences for mailing list email as well.

 

[Chad Perrin]

No, in fact, it isn't. What you're actually reading is the result of a
gateway. The primary source for this forum (ruby-forum.com/ruby) or
this newsgroup (comp.lang.ruby) is a mailing list:
(e-mail address removed).

Whoops. I thought usenet was primary, and said something to that effect
in a response to a separate subthread. Ouch. Mea culpa.

. . though I prefer the mailing list version, personally, and that's
what I'm using.

 

[Chad Perrin]

No. This requires flipping between messages. This is slow to do and
confusing - I'm probably not the only person that has problems reading
two separate documents at once, related as they may be.

I don't have problems doing so, but I have a problem with people forcing
me to do so, since it's annoying. I have a perfectly (or as close as
I've ever seen) threading mail user agent, and top posting still drives
me up the wall. I also don't store every single email that has ever
been delivered to me. I have better uses for my hard drive space than
archiving years of mailing list correspondence.

By the way, tangentially . . . is there some way to re-receive an email
on ruby-talk in case I want to reply to something I've deleted? I've
run into that once recently, and haven't any idea how I'd go about doing
that.

 

[Matt Todd]

One of the reasons I prefer GMail for reading Mailing Lists is because
it groups threads and hides quoted text (but allows you to show them
if necessary). It's very clean. If you're using other clients for your
mail list subscriptions (such as this one), I'd recommend getting a
GMail account just for them, and setting up filters to label them and
archive them so they don't show up in the mail box (which is very easy
to do).

Heck, plus you don't have to worry about storage!

M.T.

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

It's interesting that you should mention blind correspondents, because
one of them once told me he *preferred* top posting. He put it this way:
"I know what I said, I don't want to hear the whole story over again to
find out what *you* added." Of course, this assumes that people follow
the traditional Usenet etiquette of deleting all of the thread except
the part you are responding to.

Speak for yourself. I assume that people should be accomodated in the
most reasonable manner possible. Ultimately, the most potentially put
out by top-posting are the blind, who (using screen readers) would end
up with an unnavigable mass of out-of-order text.

It's interesting that you should mention blind correspondents, because
one of them once told me he *preferred* top posting. He put it this way:
"I know what I said, I don't want to hear the whole story over again to
find out what *you* added." Of course, this assumes that people follow
the traditional Usenet etiquette of deleting all of the thread except
the part you are responding to.

 

[Chad Perrin]

I've become far more comfortable and used to top-posting in almost all
correspondence primarily because the threading capabilities of my
mailreaders works almost flawlessly. The general argument I have for

So does mine, but I still don't like having to switch back and forth
between emails to get context. I'd rather read inline responses or
heavily cropped context followed by a response than have to flip back
and forth between emails while reading or, similarly annoying, have to
read the entire preceding email again before reading the response to
ensure that I will not have forgotten the context from one message to
the next.

It gets worse, though: the above annoyances assume I've bothered to keep
the preceding email locally. If I've deleted it, I would then have to
go to the online list archive to read the preceding message -- and under
those circumstances, the threading capability of my mail user agent
doesn't come into play at all.

top-posting is that scanning all messages in a thread is far easier if you
top-post, since I don't have to read through the same context again and
again in each following message. In an ideal world, everyone would have all

You talk about how great your mail client or mail user agent is, but
somehow you overlook the fact that a decent client or user agent should
provide a means to either open emails by default at the end of the text
or move to the end with a single keystroke. Mine does that. What's
wrong with yours?

the contextual emails or posts available and neatly threaded and each
message would only contain content germane to that response, as this message
does (with quoted text from previous responses available as needed). If

. . and that sounds great, except that sometimes context involves two
or three previous messages -- which gets rather ugly and difficult to
follow with top posting. This is why inline/bottom posting tends to be
preferred in more technical lists, where people get into complex
discussions involving complex contextual references and may be using
tools other than Outlook, which seems tailor-made to sabotage technical
discussion.

An additional argument for top-posting is that I can immediately read the
response without having to scan through what is sometimes dozens of lines of
context I've already read. The idea that every email should provide full
context or even require partial context is asinine, and I have no pity for
someone missing a message in the sequence. Especially in the case of

I don't think anyone wants your pity, just your common damned courtesy.
It's also in your best interests to avoid being too much of a chore to
read, since your words will be tossed in the direction of /dev/null more
often if people have to do things like navigate to the archives on the
web to figure out what the hell you're talking about, or scroll up and
down repeatedly within a given message, or even just switch back and
forth between messages in a threading mail or news reader. I've deleted
entire threads on several mailing lists rather than try to navigate
through the several-contextual-layers-deep spaghetti within them.
Because English (the primary language of this list/newsgroup/whatever)
runs top-to-bottom, quoted text is easier to read top-to-bottom. It's a
simple fact.

top-posting, it's not that much more difficult to scan previous responses
from bottom to top. Look at my email...it says "Re: something". Go look for
the "something" email and subsequent replies. Your flawed client is not my
problem.

It isn't "that much more difficult" -- it's just "that much more
annoying", and there's a limit to the annoyance I'll put up with for an
email from someone I've never met that doesn't directly affect my life.
Thankfully, this particular email stands without quoted context, so I
don't have to deal with it (including finding the preceding email and
rereading it for a sense of context).

I opened this email to read it. I don't want to have to close it, open
another email, read that, close that one, then open this email again to
read it. Worse yet, imagine that the previous email was written by
someone who assumed the same things you do. Now I have to involve yet
another email in the chain. Soon, I might have to read every single
email in the thread just to accomodate YOU. You get three guesses what
I'll do with your email once I realize the amount of context-mining I
have to do in other emails, and the first two don't count.

My time is infinitely more important to me than yours.

My time is infinitely more important to me than yours, so I don't care
that you had to spend an extra three seconds trimming, and another two
seconds moving the cursor around for inserting text where needed. More
to the point, however, I know (where you do not seem to realize this)
that if I want others to read what I have to say, it would behoove me to
accomodate them rather than simply shoving any additional time spent on
them, especially since I will not be saving much time if they reply to
me in the same fashion and I get the same treatment in return.

Perhaps your problem with realizing why people prefer not only
receiving, but SENDING, bottom/inline posted text is a failure of the
ability to plan ahead.

In practice I see the value of bottom posting, and even when I top-post I
frequently will say "see comments inline below". I don't see the original
quote as being part of a conversation...rather I see it as providing
optional context when a response is general (as when I top-post) or
mandatory context when referring to specific passages (as when I bottom-post
or "inline comment"). I think we're all smart enough to either keep up with

You should be trimming whether you top- or bottom-post, anyway, so your
comments about optional context don't really support top-posting as a
preferable alternative as far as I can see.

a thread, read through the top-posts in our reader of choice, or (god
forbid!) read from the bottom up so other folks don't have to burn cycles
cutting and pasting.

Right.

1. You'd rather force other folks to burn cycles scrolling or, worse
yet, switching between messages in the thread.

2. Cutting and pasting? What? I never cut and paste. I use the
Enter key (or the O key, with or without the Shift key, sometimes) to
insert lines into a message for adding response. Where does cutting
and pasting enter the picture?

 

[Chad Perrin]

It's interesting that you should mention blind correspondents, because
one of them once told me he *preferred* top posting. He put it this way:
"I know what I said, I don't want to hear the whole story over again to
find out what *you* added." Of course, this assumes that people follow
the traditional Usenet etiquette of deleting all of the thread except
the part you are responding to.

That's fine . . . until you get a discussion that is complex enough to
require two or three layers of context quoting. Besides, not everything
interesting said in the world was said by YOU. Sometimes, you read a
response to something someone ELSE said.

. . and sometimes, I do other things for a while, then come back to
the mailing list thread and don't want to have to open multiple emails
to get a sense of context again.

I have heard/read two complaints from users of screen readers about
top-posting. I've never heard/read the converse, as you have.

 

[Chad Perrin]

One of the reasons I prefer GMail for reading Mailing Lists is because
it groups threads and hides quoted text (but allows you to show them
if necessary). It's very clean. If you're using other clients for your
mail list subscriptions (such as this one), I'd recommend getting a
GMail account just for them, and setting up filters to label them and
archive them so they don't show up in the mail box (which is very easy
to do).

I prefer mutt (the mail user agent I use) over Gmail. I do have a Gmail
account -- I just don't use it. The ability to hide quoted text is
nice, but I simply don't find it to be useful enough to bother. At
worst, I hit the spacebar and voila, I'm at the new text.

Heck, plus you don't have to worry about storage!

I have a lot more storage locally than in my Gmail account. I just
don't like looking at all those saved threads, especially when there's
an online archive of the list for when I really, really need it.

 

[William Crawford]

Speak for yourself. I assume that people should be accomodated in the
most reasonable manner possible. Ultimately, the most potentially put
out by top-posting are the blind, who (using screen readers) would end

As Jamal noted, That's not entirely true.

Wait . . . you mean that greater-than symbols as indicators of old text
(like in this email) aren't a useful clue to you?

Sure, once I get around to processing them. On ruby-forum, they are
turned green so I can scan them quickly, but this is not the case in all
clients. In a purely text-based form, I have more difficulty mentally
parsing out stuff with a > than putting back together top posted stuff.
I'm not claiming anyone else has the same issue, but at least 1 person
does.

Read the rules set forth for ruby-talk. It may be sort of a stalemate
in general, but one should make an effort to follow the conventions of
the list/forum/whatever being used, even when arguing about top-posting
there.

I agree, one should follow the rules of the forum/list/group. Have I
broken them? No. I still top-post my email, though.

The question was not 'why do people in ruby-talk' dislike top-posting.
It was simply a question of what it is why people 'in general' dislike
it. And as you agreed, in general, it's a stalemate.

I'm not aiming to anger anyone, or try to get people to break rules,
written or unwritten. The OP asked a serious question and everyone has
been giving serious answers. It just so happens that the entire
discussion is personal preference.

 

[Chad Perrin]

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.

Even if I liked the web interface more (which I don't), I still wouldn't
use it. One of the major problem with it for me is the fact that it's
yet another place I have to go to keep up with things. Email works
excellently for me because it allows me to aggregate communications I
wish to follow in one single place. An RSS-to-email service for
weblogs, mailing lists, and newsletters to inform me of new material in
specific venues all add up to the ability to keep my informational life
managed through a single interface: my mail user agent.

If I used a web forum for all my mailing list activity, I'd have to
visit a half-dozen forums several times a day to keep up -- especially
since a forum doesn't inform me that it has received new material the
way email does. When a forum does inform me of new material, it does so
by email.

As such, I just use email.

Some people don't have this requirement, so they prefer to use the web
forum instead. More power to 'em. I just hope they realize they aren't
the only people in the world involved in the discussion, and accomodate
those of us on the mailing list appropriately.

Besides, I find mutt (my mail user agent) lets me sift through and
respond to messages a heck of a lot faster than Firefox (my browser)
would.

 

[Chad Perrin]

As Jamal noted, That's not entirely true.

For him. He's the first blind person I've run across with that opinion.
Others, in the past, have provided the impression I relayed in my
message.

Sure, once I get around to processing them. On ruby-forum, they are
turned green so I can scan them quickly, but this is not the case in all
clients. In a purely text-based form, I have more difficulty mentally
parsing out stuff with a > than putting back together top posted stuff.
I'm not claiming anyone else has the same issue, but at least 1 person
does.

Didn't you just dismiss the necessity of providing logically ordered
information by saying that "most" people have newsreaders and mail
clients that properly thread these days? Now you're complaining that
not everyone has a mail client that color codes quoted text.

I'm using mutt. It turns quoted text green just fine. I refer you back
to your previous "most" comment.

I agree, one should follow the rules of the forum/list/group. Have I
broken them? No. I still top-post my email, though.

The question was not 'why do people in ruby-talk' dislike top-posting.
It was simply a question of what it is why people 'in general' dislike
it. And as you agreed, in general, it's a stalemate.

I'm not aiming to anger anyone, or try to get people to break rules,
written or unwritten. The OP asked a serious question and everyone has
been giving serious answers. It just so happens that the entire
discussion is personal preference.

Understood. I tied it into ruby-talk/comp.lang.ruby because the
question, it seemed to me, was asked in reference to this list.

 

[Hal Fulton]

Whoops. I thought usenet was primary, and said something to that effect
in a response to a separate subthread. Ouch. Mea culpa.

. . . though I prefer the mailing list version, personally, and that's
what I'm using.

I'm not sure you can view either as "primary." The mailing
list came first, but the newsgroup is publicly postable
without signing up (a mixed blessing, of course).

And the gateway doesn't always work (and hasn't *always*
been there, although it dates to early in c.l.r history).


Hal