Off topic: What is "top posting"?

Ruby
81

On Mon, Sep 04, 2006 at 01:00:21AM +0900, Jeff P. wrote:

posting. It’s not a matter of ettiquite, since there isn’t any global
agreement that one way is “good” and the other is “bad”.

I think pretty much everybody is annoyed by overly long quotes, no
matter where they are.

David Black asked us to take this off-list if we’re going to continue
discussing it. Considering how off-topic it has gotten, following the
general agreement that on this list at least we should conform to its
guidelines (which means no top-posting), perhaps we should take his
request to heart.

There is one part that is slightly on-topic, though, even if it seems
only to beg to be put to rest:

It could be solved programatically I suppose. Just create separate text
entry boxes for the quote and the new content, and then place them
“backwards” in the email that goes out to the mailing list.

I’m confused. What do you mean by “backwards”?

If there’s something to be solved programmatically, I’m all for it. On
the other hand, I don’t see how that’s the case if the mailing list and
newsgroup interfaces “prefer” avoiding top-posting, and a forum would
just look absurd with quotes under original text.

82

On 9/1/06, Matt T. [email protected] wrote:

One of the reasons I prefer GMail for reading Mailing L. is because
it groups threads and hides quoted text (but allows you to show them
if necessary). It’s very clean.

I love gmail for the same reasons, but it’s not perfect.

It actually encourages top-posting for at least two reasons that I can
think of.

  1. When you reply to a message it puts your insertion point at the
    beginning of the first of blank lines it puts, before the quoted
    message to which you are replying.

  2. It only really likes to hide quoted text at the bottom of a message.

So when I reply I almost invariably start by deleting those two blank
lines, then any quoted stuff I want to strip, before adding my
comments, and them I just live with the way quote hiding works.

Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/