Re: [Lingo] [tlug] Better to have "bottom-posted"?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Curt Sampson writes:
 > On 2009-11-10 07:57 -0800 (Tue), steve smith wrote:

 > > With top posting the entire text is carried in each email but the thread 
 > > tends to be lost.
 > 
 > I'm not clear how this is the case.

You are assuming that threads are nanotubules, a single fiber that
contains the minimum possible elementary information units per post.
Some threads are that way, and in those cases I have no problem with
top-posting.  (See, for example, footnote [1].)

In other cases, however, a thread may be a bundle of such fibers (eg,
when discussing an RFC you might have comments on sections 1, 3, and
7, and you actually discuss 7 first because it's the most important).
I suspect that's what Steve is thinking about; it certainly is my
concern.  In these cases, a top-post is really impossible to use
without reading the whole thing, and your scanning method doesn't work
well.

The reason I object to top-posting in general is the same reason I
object to giving anybody in school a wordprocessor: it encourages
shoddy, thoughtless writing.

Without exception the busiest, most productive people I know all trim
carefully and insert responses inline, even bosses and BDFLs like Mark
Shuttleworth, Tim O'Reilly, and Guido van Rossum.[1]



Footnotes: 
[1]  That's in personal mail and in public discussion lists.  It's
quite possible they top-post in contexts where the boss writes "Looks
good to me, Steve.  Do it this way, and report back next Monday."