What is “top posting” and why is it considered bad form?
This is top posting.
Brad P. wrote:
What is “top posting” and why is it considered bad form?
And this is bottom posting.
There are different etiquette guidelines for each list. Some of it’s
personal opinion. I personally like bottom because when you read the
thread you can see where things fit together as far as the back and
forth and you see the big picture of the collaboration the thread
brings.
This is, and it is so considered because many people find it confusing
to read the answer before the question.
Is it because is it considered bad form that you came to this mailing
list?
John G. wrote:
Is it because is it considered bad form that you came to this mailing
list?
Not sure I understand your question. I had read a post in this forum
where someone was asked not to top-post, and I had seen that term
elsewhere so I thought I’d ask about it. I trust the question itself
isn’t considered bad form, else I’m hard pressed to figure out what is
and isn’t bad form.
On Aug 31, 2006, at 11:57 PM, Brad P. wrote:
What is “top posting” and why is it considered bad form?
–
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
Responding Like This.
What is top posting?
It’s confusing and makes it harder to follow a thread.
Why is it considered bad form?
Brad P. wrote:
and isn’t bad form.
The question is obviously fine, and I don’t grasp
what John G is saying.
Hal
Is it because is it considered bad form that you came to this mailing
list?The question is obviously fine, and I don’t grasp
what John G is saying.
I don’t grasp it either.
Thanks for asking, Brad: I didn’t know, either, and I think it’s good
to have these fundamental meta-questions asked every once in a while
to nudge the long-time users back to reality for a moment!
Cheers,
M.T.
Doh. I’m sorry to waste your time guys. I shouldn’t have been so
obscure. I thought it might be humorous and slightly instructive to
have the Emacs Psychiatrist answer Brad’s question in top-posting
form, and was waiting for someone to come back top-posted again with
something like: “Does it bother you that is it considered bad form
that I came to this mailing list?”. A la:
[snip snip]
Ahhh, I thought I detected Eliza in there.
No worries, I might have got it if I had had
less blood in my caffeine stream.
Hal
On 9/1/06, Hal F. [email protected] wrote:
isn’t considered bad form, else I’m hard pressed to figure out what is
and isn’t bad form.The question is obviously fine, and I don’t grasp
what John G is saying.Hal
Doh. I’m sorry to waste your time guys. I shouldn’t have been so
obscure. I thought it might be humorous and slightly instructive to
have the Emacs Psychiatrist answer Brad’s question in top-posting
form, and was waiting for someone to come back top-posted again with
something like: “Does it bother you that is it considered bad form
that I came to this mailing list?”. A la:
| Earlier you said it’s considered bad form?
|
| > No, I came here to find out…
| >
| > > Is it because it’s considered bad form that you came to me?
| > >
| > > > Well, I was just wondering why it’s considered bad form.
| > > >
| > > > > Why do you say is top posting ok?
| > > > >
| > > > > > Is top-posting ok?
—John
On Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 01:13:45PM +0900, Logan C. wrote:
On Aug 31, 2006, at 11:57 PM, Brad P. wrote:
What is “top posting” and why is it considered bad form?
Responding Like This.
What is top posting?
It’s confusing and makes it harder to follow a thread.
Why is it considered bad form?
I believe the canonical example goes a little something like this:
A. It reverses the normal flow of conversation.
Q. Why is it considered bad form?
A. It’s posting the answer above the question.
Q. What is top posting?
John G. wrote:
Is it because is it considered bad form that you came to this mailing
list?
He asked a meta-forum question in a forum for a language that supports
meta-programming. Makes perfect sense. Java forum readers couldn’t have
dealt with the inherent multi-tiered complexity, for example.
Chad P. wrote:
On Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 01:13:45PM +0900, Logan C. wrote:
On Aug 31, 2006, at 11:57 PM, Brad P. wrote:
What is “top posting” and why is it considered bad form?
Responding Like This.
What is top posting?
It’s confusing and makes it harder to follow a thread.
Why is it considered bad form?
I believe the canonical example goes a little something like this:
A. It reverses the normal flow of conversation.
Q. Why is it considered bad form?
A. It’s posting the answer above the question.
Q. What is top posting?
You know, the problem I have with this answer is that in a forum, the
first post was posted first… And then the reply was posted, with the
first quoted. Before or after, it doesn’t really matter, since I read
the first post first.
So maybe the example should be:
Q. What is top posting?
Q. Why is it considered bad form?
A. It’s posting the answer above the question.
A. It reverses the normal flow of conversation.
Q. What is top posting?
Q. Why is it considered bad form?
It’s still slightly confusing, but it’s the way top posting really
happens.
Brad P. [email protected] wrote:
What is “top posting” and why is it considered bad form?
What an interesting set of “answers” you are getting, eh?
Let me provide a bit more detail, and some history, to put it
into better perspective. (Okay… a lot more!)
First, “top posting” is a valid description of that style, but
“bottom posting” confuses people as to what it means. It does
not mean to quote an entire article and then place a response
after the entire quote. (That is called “Stupid posting”!)
Keep in mind that Usenet was begun in late 1979 by programmers,
and that at the time they mostly had 300 baud modems to tranfer
messages, using the Unix-Unix-Copy-Protocol (UUCP). The
essential ingredients are that each message cost money by the
minute to transmit, and it happens as a batch process done late
at night. (It cost money! And the other guy answered the next
day, and two days later you got to read his response.)
Many of the messages were very technical, it was highly academic
in style, and initially not very “social” as such. And Usenet
was populated mostly by people who were exceedingly logical,
often to a fault.
The style that very quickly became clearly the best, also
related to the very common practice of long running threads that
referenced comments made over a series of exchanges, some of
which were important in context and some of which were not.
The “basic rules” becames,
-
Delete all quoted text unnecessary to the point you are
making. -
Prefix each line of quoted text with a ‘>’ character, and
mark each level of quoted text with an initial attribution
line that identifies who authored each level. That results
in a long running exchange that follows this form:John D. III wrote: >Jane Doe III wrote: >>Joe B. wrote >>>Jane Que wrote >>> >>>>My name is Jane, >>>>the sun is up. >>>> >>>Well my name is Joe, and >>>the sun is down here. >>> >>My name is also Jane, >>what is a sun? >> >I'm John D., who >is Jane? My response to all of that goes here. -
Not obvious from item 2) is that this format is applied at
a minimum to paragraphs, but often to sentences or even
just to individual lines or fragments. Very rarely should
there be multiple paragraphs retained as quoted text with
a comment at the bottom referencing anything more than a
paragraph above where it is placed.A) The other paragraphs should either be deleted, or
B) The comment that references other paragraphs should
be immediately below the referenced paragraph.
The whole point is to reduce the size of the message to a
minimum (which reduced the cost to transmit it around the
country) and to maintain a geographic relationship between a
comment and the relevant quoted text that it applies to, which
in turn provides the reader with a temporal relationship that is
both ordered (read the “question” before the “answer”) and
uncluttered by intervening material.
One of the primary reasons for all of the above, but
particularly for that temporal relationship, was simply that in
virtually all cases a response would be read two day later, at
a minimum. A secondary reason was that the typical Usenetizen
was indeed academic, and typically well aware that there were
other environments where one might read a message than just the
one that the writer was experiencing. It is therefore incumbent
upon the writer to transfer as much environment and as little
ambiguity as possible.
Today we have major differences in the participants and the
mechanisms being used. These differences do not necessarily
negate the advantages of the format that was worked out, but
they make it less likely that a person new to Usenet will
quickly see the point of using the apparently quirky “Usenet
Format”.
The need for brevity as a cost saving factor is no longer
applicable, other than as an certain bit of aesthetics.
Readers using Google G., or even a Web Browser and an NNTP
server, simply will not realize that their reading environment
is different than many others. They do not imagine that what
appears to make “paragraphs” quite visibly distinct on their
screen has exactly the opposite effect on the readers that a
majority of the readers will use, as one example.
Likewise Usenet, way way back in the good old days very
quickly moved away from a strickly business atmosphere, and
became a social event too. Today’s average Usenet writer is not
an academic, and may or may not be more logical, artistic, or
simply dull too! Hence we see all sorts of not particularly
“smart” posts, just as we do with all walks of life.
Top Posting has become acceptable in some places… but you
should never forget that it also marks the writer as less than
astute. It messes up the temporal relationship for readers who
did not just immediately read the previous referenced message.
It also makes following the attributions of a multiexchange
thread difficult.
Stick with an /appropriate/ formatting style, and write with the
assumption that a reader who will see your article 20 years from
now will be your child or grandchild.
William C. [email protected] wrote:
Why is it considered bad form?
first quoted. Before or after, it doesn’t really matter, since I read
the first post first.
This is not a “forum”, it is Usenet. There are many different
reading environments, some of which are entirely different than
that presented in a “forum”.
Writing to one specific environment is a fault. Writing in a
format that is more generally adaptable to other environments is
better style. Better style makes your articles more effective
as a communications medium.
Hence, the question is, are you writing therapeutic noise to
satisfy your ego, or are you trying to communicate with others?
Stick with what you see is what you get for therapy, but go
with what others will see for effective communciations.
It’s still slightly confusing, but it’s the way top posting really
happens.
It was more than just slightly confusing… 
People should also realize that Outlook makes proper bottom posting so
tiresome that even the most ardent will soon give in and just
top-post. And some people are forced to use Outlook because their
workplace only provides an Exchange server and Windows XP. This is why
I use GMail mostly - and because it’s actually faster to get a message
sent from my colleagues from Outlook over Gmail than from Outlook to
Outlook because for some reason checking mail in Outlook is extremely
slow.
If people have solved this problem other ways, I’d be interested in the
details.
Les
Floyd L. Davidson wrote:
>>>>My name is Jane, My response to all of that goes here.
- Not obvious from item 2) is that this format is applied at
a minimum to paragraphs, but often to sentences or even
just to individual lines or fragments. Very rarely should
there be multiple paragraphs retained as quoted text with
a comment at the bottom referencing anything more than a
paragraph above where it is placed.
I always wondered if an xml-like notation might catch on for this
instead. Yes, it’s nice when your email client automatically adds the
‘>’. And it look pretty good. But it certainly bites when that doesn’t
happen or the lines get broken up in a odd manner. I would think
something like:
Would be much easier for email clients to work with. They could easily
“pretty-print” these sections.
T.
On Fri, 1 Sep 2006, Trans wrote:
I always wondered if an xml-like notation might catch on for this
instead. Yes, it’s nice when your email client automatically adds the
‘>’. And it look pretty good. But it certainly bites when that doesn’t
happen or the lines get broken up in a odd manner. I would think
something like:
not at all. i use pine and/or mutt. vim is my editor for both. i can
take
this section
instead. Yes, it’s nice when your email client automatically adds the
‘>’. And it look pretty good. But it certainly bites when that doesn’t
highlight it visually using ‘ctrl-v (movement keys)’ and then format it
with
‘shift-f’. formatting is context sensitive and knows about email
quoting,
line width, indenting, etc. therefore the output is
instead. Yes, it’s nice when your email client automatically adds the ‘>’.
And it look pretty good. But it certainly bites when that doesn’t
note that it knew what to do with the ‘>’
2) Prefix each line of quoted text with a '>' character, and mark each level of quoted text with an initial attribution line that identifies who authored each level. That results in a long running exchange that follows this form:Would be much easier for email clients to work with. They could easily
“pretty-print” these sections.
but you’d have to do something like this for literal xml:
<quote author="Floyd L. Davidson">
ick! 
regards.
-a
unknown wrote:
William C. [email protected] wrote:
This is not a “forum”, it is Usenet. There are many different
reading environments, some of which are entirely different than
that presented in a “forum”.
Forum or usenet (or mailing list), first is first. Any decent usenet
reader these days presents threads properly.
I think we’re all guilty of ego-centrism here. We all assume ‘most’
people are using this forum/list/newsgroup the same as we are.
I’ve read this through ruby-forum.com (my preference) and tin
(comp.lang.ruby) and I have not had any trouble understanding top or
bottom posted stuff.
This is not a “forum”, it is Usenet. There are many different
reading environments, some of which are entirely different than
that presented in a “forum”.
And some of them are entirely different than usenet. Bottom posting
like this is hard to read in some clients because there’s nothing to
visually identify the added parts, other than the > in front. You have
to skim, and sometimes read, old information over again before you are
able to find the new information.
Neither way is perfect, and some people are going to choose the one you
don’t like, or I don’t like. That’s just a fact of life, and not worth
complaining about anymore. The war on top-posting was a stalemate.
Isn’t the root of the disagreement the fact that some of us only use the
web portal and others choose to get the email version of the the list?
In a web forum setting, one typically reads down a thread from top to
bottom and only occasionally needs to reference the quoted stuff when
the context isn’t clear from what they read up above.
I assume that when getting the new posting in an email it would be
frustrating to get a long answer out of context, followed by a quoted
question or part of somebody else’s reply.
The real question is why isn’t either the web version or the email
version clearly superior to everyone? The two are quite different
delivery systems, and yet there is no clear winner over time. We
continue to have VHS and Betamax for eternity. That’s what strikes me
as odd.
jp