8: Top Posting

Top Posting

by David Stevenson


The question was asked:
Please excuse my ignorance but I visit occasionally and read the mail and
have contributed a little, but have now noticed someone saying that
top-posting is considered rude Can someone please explain what this is I do
not know the expression and I would hate to be classed as rude by doing this
inadvertantly Many thanks Pat Jeffo

The best way is to answer the post underneath as here. Top posting
means putting the answer first.

With a post the length of yours it really makes little difference, but
some posts are quite long, especially when there is an original, then an
answer, then a further comment.

If people follow Netiquette correctly they will delete all the earlier
posts except enough so you can see what they are replying to, and then
answer thereafter.

There are three reasons I do not like top posting.

First, top posters tend never to snip, never to shorten that to which
they reply. So people whose download time costs money are wasting money
downloading enormous lengths of stuff they have already read.

Second, and connected, is that you do not know with top posting
whether someone has written something else later on, so do you waste
your time going through it?

Neither of these would matter if top posters snipped, but they tend
not to.

Third, it is much easier to read things in order, and you can see with
good Netiquette how easily it flows. Let me give you a made-up example:




Mary wrote:
Sam wrote:
Henry wrote:
Elizabeth wrote:

How do I stop my cat eating the furniture?

Have you tried putting a velcro cover on?

That's ok if you do not have children, but they tear the velcro - what
then?

Try guaranteed child-proof super-velcro: I have been using it ever since
I had my fourth child - and my sixth cat.




It reads easily and logically, which does not happen if you put the
answer first - especially when there are further comments on the same
thread.

*BUT* not snipping is a far worse disease. If you read a five screen
article, and you like it, it is the height of selfishness to leave the
whole five screens while you add a single line to say how much you like
it - and it does not matter which end you put it, it is still very
unfair on others and shows a lack of respect for your fellow posters.
You should leave in a paragraph or two, not more, unless you are
specifically referring to bits. Then you leave in the bits to which you
refer, and reply just after them.

So, please snip, that is vital, please do not top post, but that is
not so important.




Further articles on the subject may be found at

http://www.ptialaska.net/~kmorgan/nquote.html
news.newusers.questions: Quoting Style in Newsgroup Postings

http://www.usenet.org.uk/ukpost.html#s3
Configuring your news reader to post to uk.*: How and why to quote
properly by Alex D. Baxter

http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/http/quote.html
FAQ of proper quoting: Questions from Usenet and Prof. Timo Salmi's
answers

http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/chai...rim-posts.html
Trim Your Posts by Brad Appleton




Further items on Netiquette may be found at

http://blakjak.com/gen_men2.htm


This document may also be found at

http://blakjak.com/gey_stv0.htm


--
David Stevenson Storypage: http://blakjak.com/sty_menu.htm
Liverpool, England, UK Emails welcome
Nanki Poo: SI O+W B 12 Y L+ W++ C+ I T+ A- E H++ V- F Q P+ B+ PA+ PL SC
Minke: SI W+Cp B 3 Y L W+ C++ I T A- E H++ V++ F- Q- P B PA+ PL+ SC-
Substitute .org for .com else URLs/eddresses will fail this year

"David Stevenson" wrote in message
...
There are three reasons I do not like top posting.

First, top posters tend never to snip, never to shorten that to which
they reply. So people whose download time costs money are wasting money
downloading enormous lengths of stuff they have already read.

Second, and connected, is that you do not know with top posting
whether someone has written something else later on, so do you waste
your time going through it?

Neither of these would matter if top posters snipped, but they tend
not to.

I do not find that bottom posters snip. I find it frustrating to scroll
down long messages to have a two sentence reply. I am guilty of top posting
and I do it on purpose because I don't like scrolling down so far every
time. I will snip more.

Susan M
Otis and Chester

Susan M wrote:

I do not find that bottom posters snip. I find it frustrating to scroll
down long messages to have a two sentence reply.

Here, here! I feel the same way. How come the people who complain about
top-posting all the time never complain about this? I can't stand scrolling
through a 3-page quoted post (sometimes several quoted posts, with nested
levels of ""s), only to find "LOL!" at the end. Aaaarrrgh!

Snipping is a *good* thing - it is not rude or disrespectful to the
person you're quoting. Remember, everyone's already seen their post.
And it's very considerate of the people who have to pay for their email
and newsgroup downloads.

Joyce

"Nomen Nescio" wrote in message
...
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Because the discussion does not flow in a logical order.

Why should someone NOT top post?

I top post only when I'm very tired. Otherwise I keep to netiquette.

Tweed

Reading quoted text over and over.

Reading quoted text over and over.

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Reading quoted text over and over.

Reading quoted text over and over.

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Reading quoted text over and over.

Reading quoted text over and over.

Reading quoted text over and over.

Reading quoted text over and over.

Reading quoted text over and over.

Q: What happens when people bottom post?

--

Christopher A. Young
You can't shout down a troll.
You have to starve them.
..

"Nomen Nescio" wrote in message
...
: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
:
: Because the discussion does not flow in a logical order.
:
: Why should someone NOT top post?
:

A: So you can read the new text, and decide if you really need to
scroll down to see the question.

Q: Why should you top post?

Stormin Mormon wrote
Reading quoted text over and over.

Reading quoted text over and over.

Reading quoted text over and over.

Reading quoted text over and over.

Q: What happens when people bottom post?

A: Either they snip to leave the amount that makes it readable and on
point as I have done

OR

They are just as much a pest as people who top post.

If people follow Netiquette it is helpful and makes life much easier
for others. But that is *all* of it, not some. Of course bottom
posting together with not snipping is just as bad as top posting.

--
David Stevenson Storypage: http://blakjak.com/sty_menu.htm
Liverpool, England, UK Emails welcome
Nanki Poo: SI O+W B 12 Y L+ W++ C+ I T+ A- E H++ V- F Q P+ B+ PA+ PL SC
Minke: SI W+Cp B 3 Y L W+ C++ I T A- E H++ V++ F- Q- P B PA+ PL+ SC-
Substitute .org for .com else URLs/eddresses will fail this year

Hahaha! Love it.

Most times it's a lot of work to read bottom postings. All of those
arrows drive me crazy. I just want to read the new message and go on.

Rhonda



Stormin Mormon wrote:
Reading quoted text over and over.


Reading quoted text over and over.


Reading quoted text over and over.


Reading quoted text over and over.


Reading quoted text over and over.


Reading quoted text over and over.


Reading quoted text over and over.


Reading quoted text over and over.


Reading quoted text over and over.


Reading quoted text over and over.


Reading quoted text over and over.


Reading quoted text over and over.


Reading quoted text over and over.


Reading quoted text over and over.


Reading quoted text over and over.


Q: What happens when people bottom post?

It's wild that people think you should follow arbitrary rules that you
had no input in making.

But then, there are some people who feel most comfortable with rules.

Rhonda

David Stevenson wrote:
Stormin Mormon wrote

Reading quoted text over and over.

Reading quoted text over and over.

Reading quoted text over and over.

Reading quoted text over and over.

Q: What happens when people bottom post?


A: Either they snip to leave the amount that makes it readable and on
point as I have done

OR

They are just as much a pest as people who top post.

If people follow Netiquette it is helpful and makes life much easier
for others. But that is *all* of it, not some. Of course bottom
posting together with not snipping is just as bad as top posting.

David Stevenson wrote:

If people follow Netiquette it is helpful and makes life much easier
for others. But that is *all* of it, not some. Of course bottom
posting together with not snipping is just as bad as top posting.

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of GUI email programs make trimming
posts a little bit of a pain. It's not extremely difficult, but when I
use something like Eudora or Outlook, I do find it just a tiny bit more
of a hassle to trim posts. And if you're reading email or newsgroup posts
a lot, and posting a lot, it adds up and gets pretty tiresome. So I
understand why a lot of people just end up top-posting.

Often, in places such as at work where everyone has Outlook, the norm is
to quote the entire previous exchange, and top-post the response. Those
programs also offer some cues, such as color, to set off the top-posted
response from the prior message. In a text-only medium such as rpca,
those cues are lost, or harder to see.

I do all my email and newsgroup-reading on a remote Linux shell account,
and use vi as the text editor for both. This makes trimming and interleaving
responses extremely easy for me. I can do everything with the keyboard,
so there's none of the back-and-forth between the keyboard and mouse that
gets on my nerves so much. But perhaps because most people don't use these
tools, norms are changing since the early days when all of the Internet
was text-only. And while I hardly see this as the end of civilization as
I know it, it has required some adjustment on my part. I'm happy to report
that I seem to have weathered the change intact. And I'd still prefer
to see a one-liner response top-posted than at the bottom of 3 screenfuls.

Actually, I find all the weird characters that Microsoft products
insert into posts a lot more of a pain than top-posting. I can't stand
getting posts full of "???" and other non-ascii characters that my
text-only universe doesn't recognize. And don't get me started on HTML...

Joyce