On Mon, Jul 05, 2004 at 10:50:30PM -0400, Larry Brown wrote:
> Now to ruin any possibility of being taken seriously on this list...
>
> Why is it that people are so adamant about having people not top post?
Because it's netiquette, something that over the decades has emerged as
the proper way to do things. This is the "manners" of the internet.
> People say it is the most annoying thing for them. I think it is much
> better than the bottom posting. I suppose if I skipped around a lot and
> did not follow the threads I'm interested in, I might not feel this
> way. Truth is, if I'm following a thread, I already know what the
> previous posts where and am only interested in the current postings
> view/input.
I get between 300 and 3000 pieces of mail a day. I can't possibly track
all the threads I might be interested in. I have to refresh my memory
with each thread I come across. Moreover, in my case, I _have_ to read
every single piece of mail that comes across the SLUG lists, to ensure
that people don't explode or frag the place. I don't really follow those
threads out of desire, but out of obligation. And some postings are
quite detailed, requiring replies at various points within the email.
> Grant it I would much prefer previous posts being broken up
> into splices and comments made on each point the previous person made,
> but this takes a lot of time and I can understand why people might not
> want to go through the trouble.
Here is, I think, the crux of the matter. People don't want to
interleave replies because they "might not want to go through the
trouble." It's really not a question of whether one wants to go to the
trouble or not; it's a question of manners. Manners aren't just sort of
randomly determined ceremonies somebody thought up. There are reasons
for them, though in some cases they are shrouded in usenet postings way
in the past.
If you join the SLUG list and start posting emails like "Windows is
great and Linux sucks", you're gonna get flamed within an inch of your
life. Why? It's bad manners. You don't walk into a room full of
penguinistas and start telling them Linux sucks. Aside from the sheer
stupidity of such a thing, it's just plain rude. Well-mannered people
open doors for women and old ladies and their elders, out of respect.
Well-mannered people don't cut other people off in traffic just because
_they're_ in a hurry. Well-mannered people don't loudly belch in public.
Manners is the lubricant that makes social interaction possible, and
reduces social friction.
Yes, it may be a pain in the ass for people to do things in the
"well-mannered" way, but that's secondary to maintaining good relations
by being well-mannered.
We had someone come to one of the Tampa meetings one time who started
making snide comments about George Bush in front of the whole meeting.
This was rude, though he didn't realize it. Why? Because you don't know
what sort of group (politically) you're in the middle of, and a SLUG
meeting isn't really the proper venue for this type of communication.
There aren't rules against it. It simply doesn't belong there. You might
or might not agree with his viewpoint, and you might whine about his
right to say what he thinks. But the real test was the reaction in the
room. Silence, nervous fidgetting, and changes of subject. People were
uncomfortable at this outburst. Fortunately, the person making these
statements was bright enough to see that the reaction he expected
(agreement and cheers) was not the reaction he got. He shut up about it
thereafter.
> However, I find it annoying to have to
> page through previous posts information to get down to the meat of the
> current post. I'd rather have previous posts at the bottom where I
> could read them if I didn't know what the current posting was referring
> to. (which would only happen the first time I started reading a
> thread)
Logan's link was an excellent reference. Top posters typically don't
snip, and it's no wonder. Aside from that obvious annoyance, there is
the added server bandwidth that gets used every time someone fails to
snip. I've seen some doozies on the SLUG list. Perhaps another reason
why interleaving is preferred: it tends to make people snip.
Some of this may depend on your mail reader. Mutt changes the color
of quoted portions of emails, so it's very simple to skip down to where
the most recent reply is. If your mail reader doesn't provide this
option, that may be part of the problem.
Top posting disconnects the reply from the context in which is occurs.
Often in replying to an email, there are specific points made that need
specific replies. Without interleaving, it's often exceptionally
difficult to determine what point you're replying to. It's hard to
figure out the context, when you're replying to all the points in one or
two paragraphs at the top. And this email thread is not just a private
conversation between you and one other person. Other people are
involved, and it's your job to make what you say understandable to them
as well.
If others are interleaving their replies and you top post, and the
thread continues, you've just wrecked the sequence of the thread. Okay,
there's Joe, then Sam, then Tom, and then there's Bozo, who chose to top
post. Who knows what the hell he was replying to, and it's hard to tell
that he wasn't the first person on the thread, since his is now top
posted.
It's also worth noting that you typically only get flamed when you
_don't_ interleave. That should tell you something right there.
You could probably dig into usenet archives, where this top-posting
debate I'm sure first started, and come up with other reasons, more
eloquently stated. Or just google for "netiquette" and "top posting".
There is a wealth of well-reasoned literature on the subject.
It's also been said before that much can be told about a person by the
way they communicate. That includes email. Can they spell? Do they
capitalize properly? Is their punctuation correct? Are their thoughts
coherently expressed? Do they top-post? (Yes, that's a point that's
looked at when evaluating a person's email communication.) I don't want
to mention specific names, but I'm sure you can think of people on the
list who are _very_ good at communicating (by the above criteria), and
others who are exceptionally bad. So bad, in fact, that I find it
painful to wade through their emails to try to make some sense of what
they've said. Some of the worst is kids who've spent too much time in
chat rooms and think it's okay to communicate to the rest of the world
that way:
i just bought the latest spiderman what do u think would superman beat
spiderman in a fight....
I've labored the point. I can't give you all the good reasons. In any
case, there are obvious reasons for interleaving rather than top
posting. These reasons have been enshrined into a point of netiquette,
which is the equivalent of internet manners. There are also reasons for
top posting, but I suspect those mostly have to do with the convenience
or inconvience of specific people.
Paul
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