[Vision2020] Forum Etiquette Was: Don't you get it? EVERYONE'S rights are in peril!

[Paul Rumelhart]

Chasuk wrote:
> "Bottom-posting" used to be the correct form, and I wish it still was.
>  It only changed with the influx of neophytes and Outlook Express.
> >From the jargon file:
>
> http://catb.org/jargon/html/B/bottom-post.html
>
> "bottom-post: v.
>
>     In a news or mail reply, to put the response to a news or email
> message after the quoted content from the parent message. This is
> correct form, and until around 2000 was so universal on the Internet
> that neither the term 'bottom-post' nor its antonym top-post existed."
>
> And:
>
> "... best practice is actually to excerpt only the relevant portions
> of the parent message, then intersperse the poster's response in such
> a way that each section of response appears directly after the excerpt
> it applies to. This reduces message bulk, keeps thread content in a
> logical order, and facilitates reading."
>
> I follow the conventions in the paragraph above quite scrupulously,
> but then I am an "old-timer," having posted my first messages in an
> online forum 1985ish.
>   

I think the acceptance of email into corporate culture is the major 
reason for the ubiquity of top posting.  The top is the first place you 
look, and thus you don't have to scroll down through possibly pages of 
text to find the "I agree" or "please go forward with this" or whatever 
it is you're looking for.  Time is money.  The rest of the email 
exchange is included as context, so you can see who said what and (more 
importantly) who was or was not part of the email chain.  This makes 
sense to me, since you basically have a reversed time order, the closer 
it is to the top, the more recent it is.  When you get 40 emails on the 
same topic with everyone collaborating instead of debating, it makes sense.

It doesn't work as well in a forum where multiple people with multiple 
viewpoints may be responding to only portions of what was said, causing 
the conversation to fork multiple times.

I'm used to top posting for the above reasons at work, but I'll try to 
remember to follow forum etiquette here.

Paul