[asterisk-users] Top Posting

[Don Kelly]

Bruce et al.

 

I'm posting a new thread with the "Top Posting" subject so I won't draw
complaints about "hijacking" the 4-port thread.

 

Top Posting refers to the practice of sending a message with a reply at the
top and including the entire thread below the reply. I prefer this. If I'm
actively following a thread, the most-recent information appears at the top
of the message I receive. If I've missed part of the thread, I need to look
only at the most recent message and scroll down a bit to see what's been
happening.

 

Bottom Posting requires me to scroll through all of the history before I see
the newest addition.

 

While scrolling down, I may see something new and realize that the sender
has interleaved responses, addressing multiple points with individual
responses.

 

It's been a while, but when I researched "Top Posting" I found this
Wikipedia description:

 

"Top-posting is a natural consequence of the behavior of the "reply"
function in many current e-mail readers, such as Microsoft Outlook
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Outlook> , Gmail
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail> , and others. By default, these
programs insert into the reply message a copy of the original message
(without headers and often without any extra indentation or quotation
markers), and position the editing cursor
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursor_%28computers%29>  above it. Moreover, a
bug present on most flavours of Microsoft Outlook caused the quotation
markers to be lost when replying in plain text to a message that was
originally sent in HTML/RTF. In addition, users of mobile devices
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handheld_device> , like BlackBerries
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry> , are encouraged to use
top-posting, because the devices only download the beginning of a message
for viewing. The rest of the message is only retrieved when needed, which
takes additional download time. Putting the relevant content at the
beginning of the message requires less bandwidth, less time, and less
scrolling for the Blackberry user.[4]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#cite_note-3> [5]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#cite_note-4> [6]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#cite_note-5>  For these and
possibly other reasons, many users seem to accept top-posting as the
"standard" reply style."

.and an explanation of why people complain about it:

"Objections to top-posting on newsgroups, as a rule, seem to come from
persons who first went online in the earlier days of Usenet
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet> , and in communities that date to
Usenet's early days. Until the mid-90s, top-posting was unknown and
interleaved posting an obvious standard that all net.newcomers had to learn.
Among the most vehement communities are those in the Usenet
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comp.*_hierarchy> comp.lang hierarchy,
especially comp.lang.c and comp.lang.c++. Top-posting is more tolerated on
the  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt.*_hierarchy> alt hierarchy. Newer
online participants, especially those with limited experience of Usenet,
tend to be less sensitive to arguments about posting style."

When I post (which is rarely, as I have little to offer the list), I top
post and explain that it's my preference and I don't know how to do it
effectively otherwise. This gives everyone fair warning to delete my posts
before reading them.

--Don

Don Kelly

PCF Corp
People Come First
651 842-1000
888 Don Kell(y)
651 842-1001 fax

 

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