Re: bottom / top posting - Mailing list pgsql-general

On 2021-06-09 14:41:47 -0700, Dean Gibson (DB Administrator) wrote:
>
>     On Mon, Jun  7, 2021 at 07:53:30PM +0200, Francisco Olarte wrote:
>
>         ... properly scanning a top posted one takes much longer.
>
>
> Not here.
>
>
>         I find top-posting moderately offensive, like saying "I am not going to waste time to make your reading
experiencebetter". 
>
>
> Not here either.
>
> Top-posting has been the predominantly common practice in the business &
> government world for decades, & it is easy to adapt to.  Just like HTML eMail
> (within reason) & more than 80 columns on a line.  Somehow, millions of
> ordinary people are able to adapt to this,

They have probably never known anything else, so they didn't "adapt" to
it.

> I suppose it comes from the practice in those environs when paper memos were
> the norm, & if you needed to attach the contents of other paper memos to your
> own for context, you stapled them to the BACK of your own.

Yes, that's also my theory. That made a lot of sense with paper,
especially before photocopiers were invented, and you simply added your
memo to the file and then passed the whole file to the next person.

Makes much less sense in an electronic medium where you can copy and
delete without scissors and glue.

> Of course, wherever (top/bottom) one posts, trimming is important, but it's far
> less important with top-posting.  You usually don't have to scroll down to get
> the immediate context, & if you do, you have less far to scroll. 

I know at least one person who insists that you never trim anything,
because he wants to keep only the last mail in each thread, so of course
that mail must contain everything. Of course that breaks down as soon as
somebody replies to some other mail than the most recent one. Don't know
how he deals with that.

> I wonder about the tolerance of the world we live in.  Somehow, I can deal with
> top-posting, bottom-posting, middle-posting, HTML eMail, straight-text eMails,
> 80-column eMails, variable-width eMails, occasional ALL CAPS eMails, & stupid
> multi-line signatures, all without getting my tail in a knot over it.

I can deal with it. Especially when I'm paid for it. I think it's a
waste of my time (but if somebody else pays ...) and it is inefficient,
as it is very easy to overlook relevant details in that ever-growing
mess. I never understood why so many people hated e-mail as a
communication medium. Now I do.

        hp

--
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Story must make more sense than reality.
|_|_) |                    |
| |   | hjp@hjp.at         |    -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |       challenge!"