[Techtalk] RE: top posting [was: firewire]

[Random]

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>>