Thread: bottom / top posting

Sam Gendler <sgendler@ideasculptor.com> writes:
> It's not so much that it is rude in the way of typing in all-caps, it's
> more that it leads to endlessly long chains of quoted posts below the
> relevant content,

It's really critical to understand that bottom-posting also requires
heavy trimming of how much of the previous message(s) you quote.
I despair of the number of people on these lists who think that
bottom-posting etiquette means "quote the entire thread up to this
point and then add a couple lines at the bottom".  The function of
quoting is to *briefly* remind readers of what you're responding to.
If they need more detail, they can go back to the prior messages, or
consult the list archives.  They definitely don't want to re-read
the whole thread before they see your contribution.

> It
> could probably be argued that the prohibition was more relevant in the days
> before 99% of users read their email  via clients which hide quoted content
> unless it is explicitly expanded.

Yeah, gmail is aggressively unfriendly for this purpose.  But if you
can't be bothered to trim your quotes, I'd actually much rather that
you top-post.

            regards, tom lane

Sam:

On Mon, Jun 7, 2021 at 6:20 PM Sam Gendler <sgendler@ideasculptor.com> wrote:
>  It could probably be argued that the prohibition was more relevant in the days before 99% of users read their email
viaclients which hide quoted content unless it is explicitly expanded. Arguably, smarter digesting software which
stripsout unnecessary quotations of earlier posts from beneath top-posted content would be a more effective solution
nowthat it is no longer common netiquette (nor all that necessary) to avoid top posting. 

I, personally, do not have a problem with the space, I use a 4k, gmail
collapses it AND stopping reading things like unnecessarily quoted
messages,  signatures and CO2 emitting eco recomendations to avoid
printing as become nearly automatic. My problem is I can understand a
message like yours in 5-10 seconds, properly scanning a top posted one
takes much longer. So normally I stop reading at the quote and discard
the message if I have not understood with what I have read UNLESS it's
from my mother or I'm been paid to read it.

I find top-posting moderately offensive, like saying "I am not going
to waste time to make your reading experience better".

Francisco Olarte.

Tom:

On Mon, Jun 7, 2021 at 6:32 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> It's really critical to understand that bottom-posting also requires
> heavy trimming of how much of the previous message(s) you quote.

I think we would need to find a different name, Trim-posting?
Bottom posting with full quoting is, as you pointed later, as bad or
worst than top.
I do not know if people realize a properly quoted message is easier on
the eye, and more likely to generate responses, especially when you
are requesting help.

Francisco Olarte.

And do not get me started on the "sent from my iPhone / yahoo mail for
Android / ...", above/below the megaquote in mailing lists like this.
Just wait till you get a proper MUA, it's not a LOCA!

FOS.

And do not get me started on the "sent from my iPhone / yahoo mail for Android / ...", above/below the megaquote in mailing lists like this.

And then there's the wonderful signatures stating that there were no viruses in the outgoing message ...

On Mon, Jun  7, 2021 at 07:53:30PM +0200, Francisco Olarte wrote:
> message like yours in 5-10 seconds, properly scanning a top posted one
> takes much longer. So normally I stop reading at the quote and discard
> the message if I have not understood with what I have read UNLESS it's
> from my mother or I'm been paid to read it.
> 
> I find top-posting moderately offensive, like saying "I am not going
> to waste time to make your reading experience better".

Yes, that is basically it, and if you are only communicating with one
other person, maybe that is reasonable.  However, since our emails are
read by thousands, we have a responsibility to make them as clear as
possible, and that includes trimming and quoting relevant parts of
messages.  However, as much as I try, I still regularly have typos in my
emails.  :-(

And you are right in your earlier email in saying that "don't top-post"
or "bottom-post" is not clear enough in explaining how to properly
"trim-post", as you stated.  Some people trim-post automatically, while
others have never thought about it since their communication is almost
always informal.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EDB                                      https://enterprisedb.com

  If only the physical world exists, free will is an illusion.

On 6/7/21 5:40 PM, Joshua Drake wrote:
> At least the students haven't discovered this list yet and are posting 
> their homework assignments (like they do on chat channels).

You forgot to mention that they are posting their homework assignments 
as cellphone pictures taken from half broken implementations in whatever 
GUI they are using.


Regards, Jan

-- 
Jan Wieck
Postgres User since 1994

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 experience better".

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, on very popular network eMail providers, like Google groups & groups.io, as well as their work environment.

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.

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 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.

But then, I was VERY successful in my software development career, consulting at about 30 companies (now retired).  Maybe working with others without conflict on silly issues, had something to do with it.

This message would normally have been top-posted, but was bottom-posted to avoid offending or irritating people here.  Seriously.

ps:  The people on this list have been very helpful, despite the above.

"Dean Gibson (DB Administrator)" <postgresql@mailpen.com> writes:
> Top-posting has been the predominantly common practice in the business & 
> government world for decades, & it is easy to adapt to.

The reason why the old-timers around here are sticky about this is that
we believe we are writing for the mailing list archives.  Gmail-style
quoting is indeed the appropriate amount of effort for throwaway threads
that only a few people will read and (probably) none of them will consult
again later.  But for threads that (a) will be read by hundreds or
thousands of people right now, and (b) will be searched for in the project
archives some unknowable number of times in future, it is worth spending
extra effort to make the conversation easy to follow.

I realize that a lot of posters to these lists can't be bothered to
save a few seconds of my time.  That's fine; I tend to stop reading
their messages right away.

            regards, tom lane

On 6/9/21 2:41 PM, 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.
> 

> 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.
> 

Think of it as a conforming to a style guide when writing for a 
publication. In this case the style is preferred for the reasons Tom 
Lane stated in his post.


-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

On 7/6/21 8:05 pm, Vijaykumar Jain wrote:
> I hear a lot of suggestions wrt bottom / top posting.

To be pedantic, the preferred posting style seems in fact to be *inline 
trim-posting*, i.e.

* your responses are immediately below the text you're replying to, so 
the context is immediately apparent

* anything not relevant to your response is removed

Pure bottom-posting seems to be acceptable too, but if you're responding 
to multiple quotes, inline posting is *much* friendlier to the reader.

-- 
Best Regards,
Adrian

Dean Gibson (DB Administrator) said on Wed, 9 Jun 2021 14:41:47 -0700

>> On Mon, Jun  7, 2021 at 07:53:30PM +0200, Francisco Olarte wrote:
>>> ... properly scanning a top posted one takes much longer.
>
>Not here.

Depends on whether the top-poster reiterates nouns instead of just
using pronouns, and whether he/she identifies what is being responded
to. Most don't. Hence the frustration.

>
>>> I find top-posting moderately offensive, like saying "I am not
>>> going to waste time to make your reading experience better".
>
>Not here either.
>
>Top-posting has been the predominantly common practice in the business
>& government world for decades, & it is easy to adapt to. 

OF COURSE! In business you need the CYA of having the entire discussion
archived, and often the discussion is between two people. But a mailing
list is a mind-meld of tens or hundreds of people. Placing the response
directly below the text that prompted the response makes everything
crystal clear. But just one top-poster can blow up that whole clarity
for the remainder of the thread, making everything a data mine through
posts and guessing who meant what.



> Just like
>HTML eMail (within reason) & more than 80 columns on a line.  Somehow,
>millions of ordinary people are able to adapt to this,

in business contexts


> on very popular
>network eMail providers, like Google groups & groups.io, as well as
>their work environment.

Yeah, google, microsoft and the rest of the
big boys make it much easier to top post. If they made interleave
posting easier, you'd be arguing for that right now, in all contexts
except businss.

>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.
>
>Of course, wherever (top/bottom) one posts, trimming is important,

Thank you!

People see mile long emails and blame interleave or bottom posting, when
what's to blame is a failure to remove material not germane to the
current responses. Have you ever noticed these guys who write their
last line, then leave a couple thousand lines of previous stuff, not at
all apropos to the current post, so you have to read thru all that
stuff to make sure there's nothing else? This isn't about bottom
posting, it's about laziness and/or not understanding communication.

>it's far less important with top-posting.  You usually don't have to
>scroll down to get the immediate context,

:-) The top-posted emails you and I have read must be incredibly
different. I usually find top-posts require an archaeological dig
through layers of emails past.

[snip]

>
>But then, I was VERY successful in my software development career,
>consulting at about 30 companies (now retired).  Maybe working with
>others without conflict on silly issues, had something to do with it.

I find nothing silly about clarity or the lack thereof. Imagine the
problems a project could face because person A was too lazy to
interleave post, and person B was tolerant of it and didn't ask enough
"what do you mean by" questions.

>
>This message would normally have been top-posted, but was
>bottom-posted to avoid offending or irritating people here. Seriously.

Thanks! Your message was crystal clear and easy to respond to.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques

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!"

On 2021-06-10 01:23:34 -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> Dean Gibson (DB Administrator) said on Wed, 9 Jun 2021 14:41:47 -0700
> >Top-posting has been the predominantly common practice in the business
> >& government world for decades, & it is easy to adapt to. 
>
> OF COURSE! In business you need the CYA of having the entire discussion
> archived,

You can archive more than one e-mail per thread, you know :-)

        hp

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

On 6/10/21 12:08 PM, Basques, Bob (CI-StPaul) wrote:

> Alternatively, where I deem appropriate I will do inline 
> posting/clipping, but I always announce that at the top (posting) of the 
> response.

"where you deem appropriate" you will do that, and where "I deem 
appropriate" I will stop reading whatever you thought was important.

Want to get a message to me? Think less about what you deem appropriate.


Best Regards, Jan

-- 
Jan Wieck
Postgres User since 1994

On 2021-06-10 13:21, Peter J. Holzer wrote:

On 2021-06-09 14:41:47 -0700, Dean Gibson (DB Administrator) wrote:

... when paper memos were the norm ...

... before photocopiers were invented...

Tom mentioned "old-timers."  Remember "Ditto" machines?  Remember the odor?  They were in common use when I was in high school (1960).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph

Indeed I "ditto" remember them! And the smell was the prize for running an errand for the teacher to pick up copies from the Mimeograph room.

-Tom

Hand-cranked Gestetner, anyone?  Blotchy ink, indelible mess but made one feel a brother of Gutenberg.

Because otherwise it's hard to figure out what some top posters are
talking about.


Basques, Bob (CI-StPaul) said on Thu, 10 Jun 2021 16:08:14 +0000

>All,
>
>First, I AM an old-timer, and prefer the top posting for a number of
>reasons.  I’ve tried the Digest versions of lists in the past and they
>didn’t quite work out (for me).
>
>Top post, newest on top, older stuff indented, can be clipped
>wherever, although I prefer to see everything if I need to, below. Why
>should I need to scroll down to see the newest stuff, especially in
>long threads. Top posting is very easy to understand what’s what,
>always see the latest stuff first, no scrolling to get going, if I
>want to see history, I scroll down, I prefer to see the whole thread
>at once, even the really long ones, for the context.  I tend to search
>for old stuff in the archives through Nabble which works great (for
>me).
>
>Alternatively, where I deem appropriate I will do inline
>posting/clipping, but I always announce that at the top (posting) of
>the response.
>
>My tarnished two cents worth . . .  :c)
>
>Bobb
>
>P.S.  BTW, I intentionally don’t use a big SIG in my Email because of
>my list participation.  I have no control over my companies addition
>of those “Think Before You Click . . .” placards either.  Only
>alternative there is to not use my Company account, which seems wrong
>to me for some reason  . . .  I could probably figure out some way to
>address those placards automatically, but haven’t tried as of yet.  I
>wonder if I could do it with a rule/scripting . . . .
>
>
>From: Vijaykumar Jain <vijaykumarjain.github@gmail.com>
>Date: Monday, June 7, 2021 at 7:06 AM
>To: pgsql-general <pgsql-general@lists.postgresql.org>
>Subject: bottom / top posting
>
>Think Before You Click: This email originated outside our organization.
>
>I hear a lot of suggestions wrt bottom / top posting.
>
>only when i read this,
>PostgreSQL - general - Top posting.... | Threaded View
>(postgresql-archive.org)<https://www.postgresql-archive.org/Top-posting-tt5961037.html#none>
>
>I got a feeling it sounded rude to the top post, despite me not even
>having an iota of intention to think that way. I was mostly used to
>tickets or chat. but as with chats, using CAPS was not known to me as
>shouting for a long time, when someone pointed out to me this is what
>others feel when they read.
>
>Will keep this in mind, for me as well as others who are not aware of
>the same.
>
>--
>Thanks,
>Vijay
>Mumbai, India

On Thu, Jun 10, 2021 at 10:52 PM Dean Gibson (DB Administrator)
<postgresql@mailpen.com> wrote:
> Tom mentioned "old-timers."  Remember "Ditto" machines?  Remember the odor?  They were in common use when I was in
highschool (1960).
 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph

I was in the spanish equivalent of high school in 1980 and although
there were photocopiers they were still used a lot. IIRC they were
much cheaper per copy, and were commonly used for exams and similar
high volume things. And in those years spain still lagged a lot behind
europe / usa.

Francisco Olarte.

On Wed, Jun 9, 2021 at 11:42 PM Dean Gibson (DB Administrator)
<postgresql@mailpen.com> wrote:
...
> 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.

Yeah, but I disliked it even before HTML was invented. 80 columns is a
different kind of problem, and this days nearly every mua does wraping
either on send or on display.

The problem I found is top is easier when discussing simple things and
doing ping-pong conversations. For the mails in this list, which I
read daily more or less, and which have convoluted discussions, I find
it , especially the untrimed versions normally used by top posters
much harder.

> Somehow, millions of ordinary people are able to adapt to this, on very popular network eMail providers, like Google
groups& groups.io, as well as their work environment. 

Oh, I can adapt. I can process it, and in fact I faithfully copy the
sender style when at work, after all I'm paid for it. But on things
like this, technical discussions which I read ocasionally, I
appreciate being able to read just a half page top down without
bouncing. And you bounce a lot.

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

Because the alternative was to rewrite?

....

> 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, &
stupidmulti-line signatures, all without getting my tail in a knot over it. 

I tolerate it, but my tolerance levels differ. I can deal with all of
that, and try to not complain too much, but nobody is a good self
judge. Currently I open the list in gmail 4k screen, lateral tabs,
fits about a full page of text easily, if I cannot understand a
message from a glance I normally just delete it. I'm not forcing
anyone ro repost it. And the longer this things appear the less I try
to do it. People are free to use any style, I'm free to discard the
ones I do not like.

> But then, I was VERY successful in my software development career, consulting at about 30 companies (now retired).
Maybeworking with others without conflict on silly issues, had something to do with it. 

That is work. I do not do consulting, and my people skills are not too
good, but I haven't had complains and I certainly do not try to make
people adopt any style, I just do tit for tat and go on. I care about
the quality of postings in this lists, I do not care at all about the
quality of mails I receive at work. My employer probably cares more,
as he pays me to read them and would like for me to spend as little
time as possible.

Francisco Olarte.

On 11/6/21 4:52 am, Dean Gibson (DB Administrator) wrote:
> Tom mentioned "old-timers."  Remember "Ditto" machines?  Remember the
> odor?  They were in common use when I was in high school (1960).
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph
>
Was intimately acquainted with them during my military service. Had the
"privilege" of cutting the majority of each day's stencils, because I
was the fastest typist in the clerical pool...and because I was the only
"freak" who actually found mental peace while literally cranking out
daily orders.

--
Best Regards,
Adrian

On Thu, Jun 10, 2021 at 10:21:00PM +0200, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> > 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.
  ------------------------------

OK, that was profound. I also wondered why people hate email, and now
also know the answer.  I also can't figure out how people can use
streaming chat for complex, multi-day communication since it feels just
like top-posting email.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EDB                                      https://enterprisedb.com

  If only the physical world exists, free will is an illusion.

On Thu, Jun 10, 2021 at 01:52:24PM -0700, Dean Gibson (DB Administrator) wrote:
> Tom mentioned "old-timers."  Remember "Ditto" machines?  Remember the odor? 
> They were in common use when I was in high school (1960).
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph

Yeah, everyone at school would smell the stack of papers as they passed
them back.  When I realized it was methanol and isopropanol that made me
like the smell, I realied how much chemicals could affect my behavior.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EDB                                      https://enterprisedb.com

  If only the physical world exists, free will is an illusion.

Le 11 juin 2021 19:47:09 GMT+02:00, Nikolay Samokhvalov <samokhvalov@gmail.com> a écrit :
>My thoughts:
>https://twitter.com/samokhvalov/status/1403408281389789189.
>Apologies for top-posting.

So now, we can have a thread split over two different places and tools...