[Techtalk] RE: top posting [was: firewire]
Random
random832 at rcbooks.org
Wed Jul 9 05:37:14 EST 2003
On Tuesday, July 8, 2003, at 07:49 AM, Maria Blackmore wrote:
A. Because it breaks the logical sequence of discussion
Q. Why is top posting bad?
-- Neil McGovern
Maria :)
> The worst bit is outlook express users on another mailing list i'm on
> who do _this_ - hit forward instead of reply and then compensate for
> the lack of > marks by prefixing their OWN lines with it. only rarely
> combined with top posting, though... at least there's that.
>
> A: Why is indent reversal worse than top posting?
> Q: Because it gives misleading cues as to the order of discussion
of course, that's not the worst of it... combine a long string of
replies going in both directions and you have indentation that's barely
more effective than randomly assigning quotation levels. and it's quite
entrenched by the admins' refusal to allow anyone to criticize anyone
else on it, or god forbid, to actually impose a standard. it's improved
a bit in the past few years, though mainly by the majority settling on
the wrong standard.
<<and don't get me started on AOL quoting... for that matter, some of
the ffml people have misappropriated _this_ to mean their own reply
lines>>
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