Well I think we know the preference of our community... deliberate top, bottom and interleaved comment because it is Friday afternoon and I am pretending to suffer from beer (that is the part to keep it on topic) On Apr 8, 2005 4:04 PM, David Nicholls <davidn(a)waikato.ac.nz> wrote:

Mostly it seems to by left to the preference of the user and community you are communicating with.

Well I think we know the preference of our community... deliberate top, bottom and interleaved comment because it is Friday afternoon and I am pretending to suffer from beer (that is the part to keep it on topic)

Cheers... david

Well I think we know the preference of our community... deliberate top, bottom and interleaved comment because it is Friday afternoon and I am pretending to suffer from beer (that is the part to keep it on topic)

David Nicholls wrote:

From: Bnonn [mailto:bnonn(a)orcon.net.nz] Sent: Friday, 8 April 2005 3:16 pm Subject: Re: [wlug] Top posting

For what it's worth, I agree, but you will find that the acceptable use policy of the list has been updated to include no html email, and no top

posting, so there you have it :)

Help help! I'm being repressed! ------------

Interestingly enough, I was just doing some goooooooooooooooooogle research (cheers greig!), and came across a reasonably old netiqette article which seemed to indicate that both top *and* bottom posting were acceptable so long as it was clear what you were quoting and you - as someone else put it - didn't quote an entire email (just enough to get the idea/topic). And of course interspersed is fine too.

Most of the stuff ive found seems to indicate this, even an RFC written by intel in '94. Mostly it seems to by left to the preference of the user and community you are communicating with.

Not too mention that some mail clients that people use are not "bottom" post friendly. So enforcing a policy of bottom only, makes it harder for wlug's list to be accessible to those using clients like Outlook... Like David has commented, if it is clear who you are quoting in reply, then top or bottom should be acceptable. Just my 2c Mike

From: Bnonn [mailto:bnonn(a)orcon.net.nz]

For what it's worth, I agree, but you will find that the acceptable use policy of the list has been updated to include no html email, and no top posting, so there you have it :)

IMHO it's far far too easy to miss what people are saying in an interspersed email, as simply having > in front of a line isn't really sufficient to distinguish it easily. And by easily I mean 'I can tell the difference from a 1 second glance across the room' - which is about the amount of attention a lot of people including myself pay to most list emails. Top posting is (for me) easier to read. You read the first x lines and if it doesn't make sense (which only happens maybe once in 50 times, as you've just read the parent email sepearately anyway) you scroll down and read the rest, rather than wading through the interspersedness for every single damn mail. Now sure, some mail clients (like thunderbird right now) display >'ed lines in a different color, but this doesn't always work - and many other clients don't even attempt it. The only way to reliably get interspersed-coloring to work properly is to have a magical mail client, or use HTML email. By simple application of logic I arrive at the conclusion that the list rules are forcing people into doing something which is obviously not the best option (for me anyway, but I'd be surprised if I was alone in this). Disclaimer: PLEASE NOTE THIS IS MY OPINION. YOU DON'T HAVE TO AGREE. DON'T BITCH AT ME BECAUSE I SAID WHAT I THINK. :-)