[Asterisk-Users] Top posting

[Steven Critchfield]

On Thu, 2004-11-11 at 13:42 -0800, Tom Lahti wrote:
> [snip]
> 
> >  I find that keeping the most recent part at the top allows one to get 
> > the new information easily and then if they need more background information
> >they can follow the trail down to see any context they missed. [snip]
> 
> Holy context dropping, Batman.
> 
> That approach is fine and totally reasonable in the context of a 
> one-on-one, back-and-forth conversation.  Email lists and USENET are 
> neither.  There are too many people and too many different threads involved 
> for top posting to make sense.

Take for instance that most of the people here that have the answers are
on more than one mailing list. Expect those with a lot of answers to be
on many mailing lists. Those who work profesionally in the field have to
be on a lot of lists to try and stay afloat of the information tidal
wave. 

With that in mind, those asking questions are well served by heading the
requests from members with answers to give. The less of a bother it is
for someone to read your message and even jump in some where deep in the
thread is good. 

Consider this situation. Newbie drops a question on the group but it is
in a horid blue small font and most people ignore the question. Someone
who doesn't mind the horrid small blue text answers, and in doing so
corrects the HTML error. The answer may be incorrect or incomplete, but
now that it isn't obnoxious to try and read, people swing back through
for a look. If the commenting was inline, these new readers have no
trouble getting in and verifying points or fixing problems. If you top
post, then it gets back to the effort to find what was asked to verify
information problem and the top poster has possibly cost the list
another round of the same question because it was inaccurate or
incomplete. 

There was a lot of "mays" and other conditionals, but it doesn't
distract from the fact that it is likely to have been ignored and not
proof read and either validated or challenged.  

Unless you are THE AUTHORITY on the matter, you should consider anything
you post to be subject for debate. Our community thrives on the accurate
information derived from such debates.
-- 
Steven Critchfield <critch at basesys.com>