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Top posting

C

Chris Carlen

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi:


I think I will just give up and start responding to emails by top
posting like everyone else, despite the fact that on USENET it is
tradition to bottom post.

When I bottom post on emails (in the "corporate" world) I get told by
people that they can't understand my formatting.

Oh, and not to mention that my standard ASCII email program trips up
their stupid Outlook!


Ugh!


P.S. What is the view on interleaved posting? Ie, responding per
sentence/paragraph in thick discussions?


--
Good day!

________________________________________
Christopher R. Carlen
Principal Laser&Electronics Technologist
Sandia National Laboratories CA USA
[email protected]
NOTE, delete texts: "RemoveThis" and
"BOGUS" from email address to reply.
 
P

Pooh Bear

Jan 1, 1970
0
Chris said:
Hi:

I think I will just give up and start responding to emails by top
posting like everyone else

Nothing really wrong with doing that for emails where both parties are familiar
with the context.
despite the fact that on USENET it is tradition to bottom post.

For many a good reason.

Even better is interspersed posting where each reply is posted underneath the
relevant item.
When I bottom post on emails (in the "corporate" world) I get told by
people that they can't understand my formatting.

I can see that.
Oh, and not to mention that my standard ASCII email program trips up
their stupid Outlook!

You must be dealing with MBAs. They have limited intellelect.

Graham
 
G

Genome

Jan 1, 1970
0
Chris Carlen said:
Hi:


I think I will just give up and start responding to emails by top posting
like everyone else, despite the fact that on USENET it is tradition to
bottom post.

When I bottom post on emails (in the "corporate" world) I get told by
people that they can't understand my formatting.

NO!!!!!!!

The thing they cannot cope with is that when formatted the 'correct way' the
message makes sense.

Even worse it serves to highlight any 'mistakes' they 'may' have made.

Even even worse they have to read through all their mistakes before they get
to your explanation and clarification of the last mistake they sent.

E-mails in the corporate world are not for transmission of clear
information. It takes lawyers and lots of words, paper and money to do that
sort of thing.

E-mails in the corporate world are, at the most, a way of saying 'Hi there,
thanks for networking with me, I'll network with you some more later'.

DNA
 
M

mc

Jan 1, 1970
0
Oh, dear. Does Sandia Labs not have fullscreen mailreaders yet?

On Usenet "tradition" was established very early (pre-1975 in many cases)
and is not optimal for today.
 
G

Gary Peek

Jan 1, 1970
0
Chris said:
I think I will just give up and start responding to emails by top
posting like everyone else, despite the fact that on USENET it is
tradition to bottom post.

Please don't. You might be responding to me some day. :)
When I bottom post on emails (in the "corporate" world) I get told by
people that they can't understand my formatting.

There are a lot of stupid people out there.
P.S. What is the view on interleaved posting? Ie, responding per
sentence/paragraph in thick discussions?

I can't imagine doing it any other way. As long as you leave or put the
greater than signs to the left of their stuff it is easy to read.


If you are involving more than 2 people you can put the initials of
the person at the top of the sentance opr paragraph.
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi:


I think I will just give up and start responding to emails by top
posting like everyone else, despite the fact that on USENET it is
tradition to bottom post.

When I bottom post on emails (in the "corporate" world) I get told by
people that they can't understand my formatting.

Oh, and not to mention that my standard ASCII email program trips up
their stupid Outlook!


Ugh!

Agreed! Outlook sucks!
P.S. What is the view on interleaved posting? Ie, responding per
sentence/paragraph in thick discussions?

If you try to interleave responses in an Outlook E-mail you get weird
separation bars and strange behavior when you try any editing.

...Jim Thompson
 
G

Genome

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim Thompson said:
On Thu, 08 Jun 2006 17:05:49 -0700, Chris Carlen

Agreed! Outlook sucks!

If you try to interleave responses in an Outlook E-mail you get weird
separation bars and strange behavior when you try any editing.

...Jim Thompson

Click Format, Click Text..... Sometimes you might have to Click HTML again
and then back to Text.

DNA
 
D

Didi

Jan 1, 1970
0
I think I will just give up and start responding to emails by top
posting like everyone else, despite the fact that on USENET it is
tradition to bottom post.

I have dealt with the issue by adopting a mixture of both.
I insert my quotes the normal way when I want to indicate
which sentence I am replying to and I include the entire message
at the bottom like in todays top-posting. I began doing that some
time after the max. 14400 capable phone line here is not the
only option (cable etc. is now everywhere), I must admit.
top-bottom posting combines the advantages of the
two approaches - provides the complete context for someone
seeing one message only, and makes the reply comprehensible.
It takes a negligible amount of bandwidth more if you are not
on a very slow phone line. The worst about it is that archiving
such mesages (if everybody has been doing the top-bottom posting)
will take much more space, but disk space is not so scarce
nowadays...
I am replying in such detail because I am not quite
sure myself about my adopted method, I'd be curious to get
some thoughs on that.

Dimiter
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Click Format, Click Text..... Sometimes you might have to Click HTML again
and then back to Text.

DNA

I'm not seeing that function in Eudora.

...Jim Thompson
 
P

Pooh Bear

Jan 1, 1970
0
It's best practice.
If you try to interleave responses in an Outlook E-mail you get weird
separation bars and strange behavior when you try any editing.

So much better is available ! I use Netscape 4.8 for heaven's sake since it's
hard to beat. Why change ? I've seen / tried others and not been much impressed.

Graham
 
P

Pooh Bear

Jan 1, 1970
0
Genome wrote
Click Format, Click Text..... Sometimes you might have to Click HTML again
and then back to Text.

That already tells me enought to know I shouldn't use it !

Graham
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
It's best practice.


So much better is available ! I use Netscape 4.8 for heaven's sake since it's
hard to beat. Why change ? I've seen / tried others and not been much impressed.

Graham

I use Eudora Pro v3.0.5. How's that for aged software ?;-)

...Jim Thompson
 
M

mc

Jan 1, 1970
0
I have dealt with the issue by adopting a mixture of both. ....
I am replying in such detail because I am not quite
sure myself about my adopted method, I'd be curious to get
some thoughs on that.

I like it. I, too, alternate between top, bottom, and interleaved posting
as the situation seems to require.

I am not going to cater for people who are still running 1978 UNIX on 1975
DECwriters instead of computers with full-screen threaded news reading. (Or
who pretend they are.) The fact is, some replies are best interleaved; I
view bottom posting (which I'm doing right now) as a special case of
interleaving; but if the reply is short and snappy and doesn't require much
context, why not give it right at the top?

The one argument I won't buy is, "It's Tradition." This is high technology,
folks, not Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe! We should always be ready to adapt our
techniques to the changing situation.

I find it funny that, at age 48, I have to spend so much time telling people
20 years younger than me to move with the times. Among computerniks there
is tremendous nostalgia for 1975-1985, the period when geeks were viewed as
superhuman.
 
P

Pooh Bear

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
I use Eudora Pro v3.0.5. How's that for aged software ?;-)

Hard to comment since I've only ever heard of it by repute.

I recall using Mosaic when I first trawled the net and getting excited over the beta
releases of Netscape 2 ! Does anyone recall when that was ? I'm thinking around
1995-6.

Graham
 
D

Didi

Jan 1, 1970
0
Thanks for the reply, I hoped I was not alone on that :).
The one argument I won't buy is, "It's Tradition."

Same here, this is about communication, not about
practicing religion. Nothing against those who practice
anything as long as they don't demand that I join,
that is.
I find it funny that, at age 48, I have to spend so much time telling people
20 years younger than me to move with the times.

Well I would expect a youth like yoursef to be progressive (I am
two years older but I guess I don't live up to the expectation
of being a traditionalist, either...). :) :)

Cheers,

Dimiter
 
I

Ian Bell

Jan 1, 1970
0
Chris said:
Hi:


I think I will just give up and start responding to emails by top
posting like everyone else, despite the fact that on USENET it is
tradition to bottom post.

Just ignore them and do the right thing. Remember to trim their garbage and
intersperse your replies so they can see what you are doing.

Ian
 
T

Tim Williams

Jan 1, 1970
0
Chris Carlen said:
I think I will just give up and start responding to emails by top posting
like everyone else, despite the fact that on USENET it is tradition to
bottom post.

I email exactly like I reply everywhere else. If my comments are general or
the parent message has a uniform subject, there's no point in selecting
specific text nor highlighting it by replying underneath.

(For that matter, I could top post here, but since you have convienient
short paragraphs and I'm going to get kind of long, I'm putting it down
here.)

If my response is detailed and replying to specific statements, I always
reply interleaved. I do not ever bottom post. You may say I am bottom
posting right now, and that is true in a manner of speaking, but I see this
as interleaved, with the only subtle difference being I have no further
quoted text to reply to below.

Bottom posting is the Scum of the Earth. One or two lines below several
_pages_ of quoted text, that isn't even /trimmed/, is the lowest an Human
Being can sink to. If you don't have the courtesy to trim a specific couple
sentences or paragraph when bottom posting, don't reply at all!

Tim
 
P

Paul E. Schoen

Jan 1, 1970
0
I'm one of the old-timers at age 57, but I use tradition (and old tools)
only when there is a clear benefit. It is wise to be open to new ideas. I
am top posting here to show how it can be appropriate. In this case, I can
state my premise that it can be OK, illustrated by the example as follows:
 
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