[Wylug-discuss] List Etiquette: Top Posting vs. Bottom Posting

[Smylers]

Lee Evans writes:

> > I fully appreciate that MS Outlook has virtually enforced top
> > posting of 1-to-1 email across great swathes of t'Internet.
> 
> That's an unfair remark - Outlook is far from the only email client to
> use this behavior by default;

True, but aren't the others all post-Outlook?  I didn't encounter people
top-posting until Outlook appeared.

> Personally, I think the type of posting to use depends on the message
> in question as others have, directly and indirectly, suggested. Horses
> for courses, as they say.  From my own perspective, some messages
> require a point-by-point reply and a rebuttal-follows-quote method is
> logical, easy to read, and, to me at the least, the best, as cited
> above.

Exactly.

However, on mailing lists because _some_ messages are in that category,
you have to presume that all of them are.

Because even if all you're doing is adding a couple of lines and it's
obvious enough what you mean if you post them at the top of the reply,
that can completely stuff things up for anybody who wants to follow up
on you: they can quote your lines, but to have the context of what your
lines were referring to they may also need to quote part of the message
before you (the shorter your message is the more likely this is the
case).  Which in your mail came after your message.  Ah.

Changing posting style part-way through a thread is awkward,
particularly from top-posting to interspersed quoting.  If you top-post
then you are declaring that you believe top-posting to be the most
appropriate method for not just your current message but for all further
-- as yet unwritten -- mails in the thread.

As such I propose that psychics are the only people we allow to
top-post.

Smylers