[Techtalk] Top Posting (was firewire)

[nicole]

At 21:14 on Jul 8, Carla Schroder shook the earth with:

> OK, so where is the intelligent choice of responding to this post, where you
> have mixed up top-and bottom-posting? And left in gobs of redundant sigs? (I
> also posted a comment below.)

Honestly, I think the lack of snipping drives me more nuts than top vs.
bottom posting. In general I see more top-posters that forget to snip, but
bottom-posters are often also guilty of this offence.

Usually, I will place quick general ideas at the top of my post (and
disclaimers, if need be) and then specific thoughts in response to the
original below the original pieces. Conclusions, somewhat
off-topic/tangential thoughts, and longer ideas at the bottom. It's like
writing an essay... Introduction, meat, conclusion. The meat of your essay
doesn't go at the top, it goes in the middle/toward the bottom.

If there aren't any general ideas or a good "introduction" sort of phase,
well, it's bottom posting all around.

If I I am dealing with an audience that is going to be more likely to
understand top-posting than bottom-posting, I will place a little snip at
the top that includes "my responses below". I like to encourage the use of
bottom-posting when I am dealing with people asking questions or raising
specific issues, and hope that they will "pay it forward" and do the same.

I have all of my mailers set to top initially. I use pine for the majority
of my mail, so it makes snipping the to: and cc: lines easier to remember.
After using text MUAs for so long, I have a very clear habit of replying
to e-mail that is friendly to bottom-posting, snipping, and checking the
headers. I used graphical Netscape/Mozilla for a while, but overall I like
the text mailer style (unless I need HTML, which I must say I can't
remember ever happening).

I hate-hate-hate-hate how Outlook defaults to rich text/HTML email. As
someone else has mentioned, it makes bottom posting difficult without
editing tricks. And, converting to plain text does NOT convert the reply
indents from the HTML/RTF "|" dealie to the plain text character of my
choice (usually >). I can convert the original to plain text then do a
reply, but if there are already existing replies I screw up the formatting
more with my conversion than dealing with the editing. I am  hoping that
by posting in plain text with Outlook, it will convince others to do so
(I also send out notices to my staff to remember that plain text saves
bandwidth and is a really good choice unless you have a good reason
otherwise).

This is somewhat off topic for techtalk, but I think it is relevant
discussion.

-nicole