[Tfug] top/bottom and middle posting

[John Gruenenfelder]

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 05:22:30PM -0700, Paul Lemmons wrote:
> I am not a stickler for top or bottom posting but when there is a mix it  
> makes posts almost impossible to follow. Netiquette dictates fairly  
> bluntly that bottom posting is how one should reply to a post. While I  
> recognize that almost every windows email program in the world top  
> posts, it is not all that tough to scroll to the bottom to type in a  
> response. This is a local group so we may have our own conventions but  
> we really ought to have some consistent means of doing this. I vote for  
> bottom posting because I think the Netiquette folks are right on this  
> one. What do you all think?
>
> BTW: I have seen this topic boil into a raging flame war. I really do  
> not want that to happen here. It is not dogma it is convention.

I am strongly in favor of bottom posting.  Also, I think that many people's
complaints about this method would go away if everybody would practice some
basic editing.  When you reply, you don't need to keep all 500 original lines.
If somebody replies to this, my text should be present, *possibly* some of
Paul's message, and nothing before that (though, in this case, there is
nothing before that).  Similarly, any reply to that message should not include
any of Paul's text.

It really does help the flow to have some context above your reply, but it has
limits.  Use some common sense.

I should also say that I think "in-line" replies are perfectly good (and
perhaps superior) when replying to a long message.  Inser your reply text
after the paragraph(s) in question.  That also greatly helps the flow, but it
only makes sense if the message is long.


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--John Gruenenfelder    Systems Manager, MKS Imaging Technology, LLC.
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