«

"John Roth" <> writes:

> AFAIC, it doesn't matter whether you put your response at the
> top or bottom; what matters to me is whether I can find what
> you're talking about quickly. That means ruthless pruning of the
> post so that old stuff gets deleted.

Look, y'all, email and usenet aren't all that dissimilar, in this
respect, from face-to-face conversation which has been
interrupted. Imagine you pick up a conversation whith someone, which
was interrupted a few minutes, hours, or days before.

Do you go up to your interlocutor, say whatever you wanted to say
next, and then recite (both sides of) the whole conversation you had
before? No.

Do you _first_ repeat (both sides of) the whole conversation you had
before, and at the very end (ten minutes later, or so) say whatever it
is that you wanted to say? No. Does your interlocutor then repeat
everything both of you have said so far once again, before adding his
new contribution? No.

Or, do you, re-establish context by saying something like "Concerning
your point about fubaring the frobnicators", and then make your point
("I would never fubar a frobnicator, without barzotting it first") ?

Then, maybe you wish to make a second point ... in which case you
would establish the relevant context again ("As for what you said
about pinging a pong"), and make your next point, relevant to the
context you just established ("When pinging a pong, you must take care
to pang it first").


I find that people who do not make the effort to quote the relevant
part(s) of messages to which they are replying, and do not make the
effort to put their replies close to (ie just after) the relevant
citations they have left in, more often than not, also fail to make
the effort to organize their own thoughts in their entire
consideration of the discussion.

Exchanges with top-posters are usually of a low quality: top-posting
makes it difficult to follow the thread ... but top-posters tend to
write codswallop more often that those who trim and organize their
replies carefully.

This is partly because the process of trimming the original post,
forces you to identfy the relevant points being made, which helps you
notice more clearly what is actually being said. Partly, it is because
if you post on usenet for more than a day and fail to notice that
top-posting sucks, then ... well, that says something about your
perspicacity.

What makes you think people who top post don't also put a lot of effort
into carefully organizing their replies and trimming the original post
down to the most relevant points?

Jacek Generowicz <> wrote:
> top-posters tend to write codswallop more often that those who trim
> and organize their replies carefully.
>
> This is partly because the process of trimming the original post,
> forces you to identfy the relevant points being made

Roy Smith <> wrote:
> Jacek Generowicz <> wrote:
>> top-posters tend to write codswallop more often that those who trim
>> and organize their replies carefully.
>>
>> This is partly because the process of trimming the original post,
>> forces you to identfy the relevant points being made
>
> What makes you think people who top post don't also put a lot of effort
> into carefully organizing their replies and trimming the original post
> down to the most relevant points?

Bitter, hard-earned experience. Some people do so, as you demonstrated,
but IMB,H-EE the vast majority do not.

Another problem that occurs when some people top-post and some do not is
that the conversation thread quickly becomes unreadable unless someone
takes the time to rearrange it into a consistent form (as I did in
composing this reply).

--
Robin Munn

Robin Munn wrote:

> Another problem that occurs when some people top-post and some do not
> is that the conversation thread quickly becomes unreadable unless
> someone takes the time to rearrange it into a consistent form (as I
> did in composing this reply).

And more often than not, that's perceived as really not worth the
effort. So, a lot of people that might have provided useful answers,
doesn't care to reply to top-postings because it involves too much work
to rearrange the text to respond in a sensible way.

Top-posting *is* shitting in your pants.

regards,
--
Leif Biberg Kristensen
http://solumslekt.org/
Validare necesse est

Roy Smith <> writes:

> What makes you think people who top post don't also put a lot of effort
> into carefully organizing their replies and trimming the original post
> down to the most relevant points?

Over a decade of observation of usenet and mailing lists.