On 15 March 2016 at 23:44, William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca> wrote:
If you're replying to the whole email, or need to maintain chronological order (such as following up on your own post with "Oh, by the way..."), then top post. Like I'm doing here.
On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 04:02:34PM -0400, Alvin Starr wrote:
Hugh Redelmeier posted a message to the list about my posting replies at the top of messages.
We have had a bit of a discussion offline about this but Hugh suggested we take it back to the list and see what the feelings of others are.
My position is that posting at the top is most efficient and the easiest for the reader.
Of those who've responded to this thread, we seem to be pretty evenly split. I really don't care whether you top- or bottom-post - but I'm in favour of trimming and would love to have consistency so I know where I'm going to find responses. I'm bottom-posting because that's the official rule on this list (and it doesn't work well because now we're non-sequential after William's top-post ... thus the desire for consistency). Sometimes interspersed makes sense as you respond to separate points. But here's the problem: people are going to do whatever the hell they want, and/or whatever's the most convenient. GMail, one of the largest email providers in the world, assumes you're going to top-post and NOT trim, so that's what it's easiest to do if you're using GMail. I have to fight it to do it this way - I'm okay with that, but a lot of people won't bother, and should they really have to? So what are you going to do about it? Apply a three-strikes-you're-out rule? I don't think so: booting people from the list over top-/bottom-/interspersed is way too Draconian, and long arguments (which I admit I'm only adding to) over which it should be still won't stop people doing what they want unless you apply ridiculously over-the-top policing. So ... My suggestion is to let it go. Make bottom-posting "recommended" and just accept that we live in an imperfect world. -- Giles http://www.gilesorr.com/ gilesorr@gmail.com