[LAU] Top Posting [Was: Linux compatible keybord controller?]

[James Harkins]

Q <lists at ...> writes:
> I've never encountered bottom-posting outside of Linux mailing lists 
> (admittedly I'm not on any non-Linux mailing lists). Nobody has done it 
> in any place that I've worked, or at any other organisation that I've 
> communicated with by email, either privately or at work.

FWIW, my policy for my own emails has been, for years:

- Quote ONLY the relevant points to which I'm responding. Delete ALL other
quoted material before sending.

- Place my reply immediately after the relevant point. The reader sees
"point - response" in that order. This is logical.

> It would be ludicrous to have to scroll through months, maybe even 
> years, of earlier messages (which need to be there for context, to refer 
> to WHEN required) to get to what is the most important bit of 
> information -- the latest bit, the thing that the person is saying now 
> in response to the previous message.

Keeping old material for context makes sense in an email thread *which is
not otherwise archived*.

Mailing lists are archived, so your point does not hold here.

> It seems to me that the only problem is that bottom-posting clashes with 
> how people actually write messages in every other sphere of life -- it 
> (bottom-posting) is an outdated practice that needs to die and allow 
> mailing lists to move with the times.

This is pretty close to saying that mailing lists themselves are behind the
times. That might be true, actually.

hjh