[nylug-talk] Top or Bottom Posting

[Nathan Eckenrode]

Out of twenty email lists to which I subscribe, this is the only one where
	a) top posting is suggested [or some such higher level of requirement]  
	b) rigourously debated, pointed out and any offenders vilified
	c) even mentioned.

It is interesting that Wikipedia should be quoted as a source for  the Law 
about discussions heading towards someone being called a Nazi, when not once 
that this topic has been brought up on the list (and there have been numerous 
occasions) has anyone suggested that a person go and read the article in 
Wikipedia about Netiquette. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netiquette ) 
Perhaps the reason for that, is that the first item under the Header for 
Email and Mailing lists states, "Top posting is generally accepted to a much 
greater degree, especially for business use. Compared to Usenet, the smaller 
audience and more reliable delivery method means the flow of conversation is 
often clear." 

Tho only instances which top posting has ever been less clear when reading a 
thread or joining into a thread that has been going on for some time, are 
when the poster says stuff like "yes, me too." or  "i totally agree" or other 
such banalities which do not qualify as either a complete thought or one 
which warrants the time required to compose and reply.


On Monday 25 June 2007 9:09:37 pm Seth Johnson wrote:
> Just thought it would be a useful thing for someone to code up an
> addition to email clients that would convert an email -- with all the
> indented, quoted emails from earlier in the thread -- into top- or
> bottom-posting.  So long as the indentations are there, shouldn't be
> problematic.  People would focus more on the indentations and
> maintaining their integrity instead of their necessarily being a back
> and forth between top and bottom posters.  And a bonus would be that
> as people saw their contributions being rejiggered (though with
> integrity with respect to the quote indentations), more and more of
> the time people will crop intelligently.
>
> Regarding top and bottom posting, I think we should remember that this
> is an asynchronous medium, and that opens up a variety of modes of
> discourse.  You're not in meatspace and in real time where you might
> be sitting with one or a few more people, in the thread of a
> continuous conversation where there's more of an impression that each
> comment refers linearly to specific comments in a single flow that
> necessarily goes in its own order -- or where there might be someone
> at a podium, and there's only so much "sound space" and you have to
> govern who has "the floor" in real time.
>
> Instead, anybody can either converse more contiguously or speak more
> broadly, as they please, when they please, in the thread or not.  This
> isn't to say that top posting is just for pontificating -- it's not
> that it's meant that way and it doesn't come across that way -- but it
> is a structure that is suited for speaking more broadly than "in the
> thread."  I've never been able to give much credence to the top- or
> bottom-posting dispute when it goes beyond just recommending that
> folks use inline comments to keep things in context, because to me
> language and structure are too interrelated to say email discourse has
> to be one way or the other.
>
>
> Seth
-- 
Nathan Eckenrode
EckenrodeHouse.net
646-652-1771