[wellylug] "The quart-annual top-posting debate" was: Setting up a simple web server

[Martin Bähr]

On Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 09:38:37PM +1200, Pete Black wrote:
> You have to wonder, if top-posting is such a bad thing, why most mail 
> clients default to putting the cursor at the top of the reply when 
> replying to emails.

because when answering an email, i need to start at the top, reading
through the quote, deleting what i don't need and find the point where i
start to enter my reply.

> Perhaps if it bothers you enough, you post-order zealots should submit 
> patches to evolution, thunderbird, mutt and probably emacs too to send 
> the cursor to the bottom of the post when replying to mail.

that would defeat the purpose of actually entering replies below the
lines they are replying to, because first i'd have to move upward to the
start of the reply.

> I'm actually half-serious about this, since if it took more effort to 
> top-post, I doubt hopelessy lazy a**holes like me would ever do it.

it would create bottom posters, which would be just as bad as top
posters. 

the important part is not top vs bottom, but reading and
trimming the quote to the minimum needed for context vs quoting all of it.

if you only have one reply to one quotes, it does not matter wether it
is at the top or at the bottom, but as you can see in this mail, the
quote is split into 3 seperate parts, and each gets its own reply.
this is neither a top nor a bottom post.

trimming is the important part here. the default should be to not quote
anything at all unless it is important for context. if you quote it
should contain the relevant parts of the text, nicely reformated if
needed, since they are part of your message.

the irritating part about most top and bottom postings is that it looks like
the writer did not care enough to make the message look nice, because
most quote empty lines, signatures, and even headers as well.

greetings, martin.
-- 
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pike programmer   travelling and working in europe             open-steam.org
unix system-      bahai.or.at                        iaeste.(tuwien.ac|or).at
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Martin Bähr       http://www.iaeste.or.at/~mbaehr/