bottom / top posting

Sam Gendler < > writes:
> It's not so much that it is rude in the way of typing in all-caps, it's
> more that it leads to endlessly long chains of quoted posts below the
> relevant content,

It's really critical to understand that bottom-posting also requires
heavy trimming of how much of the previous message(s) you quote.
I despair of the number of people on these lists who think that
bottom-posting etiquette means "quote the entire thread up to this
point and then add a couple lines at the bottom".  The function of
quoting is to *briefly* remind readers of what you're responding to.
If they need more detail, they can go back to the prior messages, or
consult the list archives.  They definitely don't want to re-read
the whole thread before they see your contribution.

> It
> could probably be argued that the prohibition was more relevant in the days
> before 99% of users read their email  via clients which hide quoted content
> unless it is explicitly expanded.

Yeah, gmail is aggressively unfriendly for this purpose.  But if you
can't be bothered to trim your quotes, I'd actually much rather that
you top-post.

                        regards, tom lane

Sam:

On Mon, Jun 7, 2021 at 6:20 PM Sam Gendler < > wrote:
>  It could probably be argued that the prohibition was more relevant in the days before 99% of users read their email  via clients which hide quoted content unless it is explicitly expanded. Arguably, smarter digesting software which strips out unnecessary quotations of earlier posts from beneath top-posted content would be a more effective solution now that it is no longer common netiquette (nor all that necessary) to avoid top posting.

I, personally, do not have a problem with the space, I use a 4k, gmail
collapses it AND stopping reading things like unnecessarily quoted
messages,  signatures and CO2 emitting eco recomendations to avoid
printing as become nearly automatic. My problem is I can understand a
message like yours in 5-10 seconds, properly scanning a top posted one
takes much longer. So normally I stop reading at the quote and discard
the message if I have not understood with what I have read UNLESS it's
from my mother or I'm been paid to read it.

I find top-posting moderately offensive, like saying "I am not going
to waste time to make your reading experience better".

Francisco Olarte.

Tom:

On Mon, Jun 7, 2021 at 6:32 PM Tom Lane < > wrote:
> It's really critical to understand that bottom-posting also requires
> heavy trimming of how much of the previous message(s) you quote.

I think we would need to find a different name, Trim-posting?
Bottom posting with full quoting is, as you pointed later, as bad or
worst than top.
I do not know if people realize a properly quoted message is easier on
the eye, and more likely to generate responses, especially when you
are requesting help.

Francisco Olarte.

And do not get me started on the "sent from my iPhone / yahoo mail for
Android / ...", above/below the megaquote in mailing lists like this.
Just wait till you get a proper MUA, it's not a LOCA!

FOS.

And do not get me started on the "sent from my iPhone / yahoo mail for Android / ...", above/below the megaquote in mailing lists like this.

And then there's the wonderful signatures stating that there were no viruses in the outgoing message ...

On Mon, Jun  7, 2021 at 07:53:30PM +0200, Francisco Olarte wrote:
> message like yours in 5-10 seconds, properly scanning a top posted one
> takes much longer. So normally I stop reading at the quote and discard
> the message if I have not understood with what I have read UNLESS it's
> from my mother or I'm been paid to read it.
>
> I find top-posting moderately offensive, like saying "I am not going
> to waste time to make your reading experience better".

Yes, that is basically it, and if you are only communicating with one
other person, maybe that is reasonable.  However, since our emails are
read by thousands, we have a responsibility to make them as clear as
possible, and that includes trimming and quoting relevant parts of
messages.  However, as much as I try, I still regularly have typos in my
emails.  :-(

And you are right in your earlier email in saying that "don't top-post"
or "bottom-post" is not clear enough in explaining how to properly
"trim-post", as you stated.  Some people trim-post automatically, while
others have never thought about it since their communication is almost
always informal.

--
  Bruce Momjian  < >         https://momjian.us
  EDB                                       https://enterprisedb.com

  If only the physical world exists, free will is an illusion.

On 6/7/21 5:40 PM, Joshua Drake wrote:
> At least the students haven't discovered this list yet and are posting
> their homework assignments (like they do on chat channels).

You forgot to mention that they are posting their homework assignments
as cellphone pictures taken from half broken implementations in whatever
GUI they are using.


Regards, Jan

--
Jan Wieck
Postgres User since 1994

On Mon, Jun  7, 2021 at 07:53:30PM +0200, Francisco Olarte wrote:

... properly scanning a top posted one takes much longer.

Not here.

I find top-posting moderately offensive, like saying "I am not going to waste time to make your reading experience better".

Not here either.

Top-posting has been the predominantly common practice in the business & government world for decades, & it is easy to adapt to.  Just like HTML eMail (within reason) & more than 80 columns on a line.  Somehow, millions of ordinary people are able to adapt to this, on very popular network eMail providers, like Google groups & groups.io, as well as their work environment.

I suppose it comes from the practice in those environs when paper memos were the norm, & if you needed to attach the contents of other paper memos to your own for context, you stapled them to the BACK of your own.

Of course, wherever (top/bottom) one posts, trimming is important, but it's far less important with top-posting.  You usually don't have to scroll down to get the immediate context, & if you do, you have less far to scroll. 

I wonder about the tolerance of the world we live in.  Somehow, I can deal with top-posting, bottom-posting, middle-posting, HTML eMail, straight-text eMails, 80-column eMails, variable-width eMails, occasional ALL CAPS eMails, & stupid multi-line signatures, all without getting my tail in a knot over it.

But then, I was VERY successful in my software development career, consulting at about 30 companies (now retired).  Maybe working with others without conflict on silly issues, had something to do with it.

This message would normally have been top-posted, but was bottom-posted to avoid offending or irritating people here.  Seriously.

ps:  The people on this list have been very helpful, despite the above.

"Dean Gibson (DB Administrator)" < > writes:
> Top-posting has been the predominantly common practice in the business &
> government world for decades, & it is easy to adapt to.

The reason why the old-timers around here are sticky about this is that
we believe we are writing for the mailing list archives.  Gmail-style
quoting is indeed the appropriate amount of effort for throwaway threads
that only a few people will read and (probably) none of them will consult
again later.  But for threads that (a) will be read by hundreds or
thousands of people right now, and (b) will be searched for in the project
archives some unknowable number of times in future, it is worth spending
extra effort to make the conversation easy to follow.

I realize that a lot of posters to these lists can't be bothered to
save a few seconds of my time.  That's fine; I tend to stop reading
their messages right away.

                        regards, tom lane

On 6/9/21 2:41 PM, Dean Gibson (DB Administrator) wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jun  7, 2021 at 07:53:30PM +0200, Francisco Olarte wrote:
>>> ... properly scanning a top posted one takes much longer.
>

> I wonder about the tolerance of the world we live in.  Somehow, I can
> deal with top-posting, bottom-posting, middle-posting, HTML eMail,
> straight-text eMails, 80-column eMails, variable-width eMails,
> occasional ALL CAPS eMails, & stupid multi-line signatures, all without
> getting my tail in a knot over it.
>

Think of it as a conforming to a style guide when writing for a
publication. In this case the style is preferred for the reasons Tom
Lane stated in his post.


--
Adrian Klaver

On 7/6/21 8:05 pm, Vijaykumar Jain wrote:
> I hear a lot of suggestions wrt bottom / top posting.

To be pedantic, the preferred posting style seems in fact to be *inline
trim-posting*, i.e.

* your responses are immediately below the text you're replying to, so
the context is immediately apparent

* anything not relevant to your response is removed

Pure bottom-posting seems to be acceptable too, but if you're responding
to multiple quotes, inline posting is *much* friendlier to the reader.

--
Best Regards,
Adrian

Dean Gibson (DB Administrator) said on Wed, 9 Jun 2021 14:41:47 -0700

>> On Mon, Jun  7, 2021 at 07:53:30PM +0200, Francisco Olarte wrote:  
>>> ... properly scanning a top posted one takes much longer.  
>
>Not here.

Depends on whether the top-poster reiterates nouns instead of just
using pronouns, and whether he/she identifies what is being responded
to. Most don't. Hence the frustration.

>
>>> I find top-posting moderately offensive, like saying "I am not
>>> going to waste time to make your reading experience better".  
>
>Not here either.
>
>Top-posting has been the predominantly common practice in the business
>& government world for decades, & it is easy to adapt to. 

OF COURSE! In business you need the CYA of having the entire discussion
archived, and often the discussion is between two people. But a mailing
list is a mind-meld of tens or hundreds of people. Placing the response
directly below the text that prompted the response makes everything
crystal clear. But just one top-poster can blow up that whole clarity
for the remainder of the thread, making everything a data mine through
posts and guessing who meant what.



> Just like
>HTML eMail (within reason) & more than 80 columns on a line.  Somehow,
>millions of ordinary people are able to adapt to this,

in business contexts


> on very popular
>network eMail providers, like Google groups & groups.io, as well as
>their work environment.

Yeah, google, microsoft and the rest of the
big boys make it much easier to top post. If they made interleave
posting easier, you'd be arguing for that right now, in all contexts
except businss.

>I suppose it comes from the practice in those environs when paper
>memos were the norm, & if you needed to attach the contents of other
>paper memos to your own for context, you stapled them to the BACK of
>your own.
>
>Of course, wherever (top/bottom) one posts, trimming is important,

Thank you!

People see mile long emails and blame interleave or bottom posting, when
what's to blame is a failure to remove material not germane to the
current responses. Have you ever noticed these guys who write their
last line, then leave a couple thousand lines of previous stuff, not at
all apropos to the current post, so you have to read thru all that
stuff to make sure there's nothing else? This isn't about bottom
posting, it's about laziness and/or not understanding communication.
 
>it's far less important with top-posting.  You usually don't have to
>scroll down to get the immediate context,

:-) The top-posted emails you and I have read must be incredibly
different. I usually find top-posts require an archaeological dig
through layers of emails past.

[snip]

>
>But then, I was VERY successful in my software development career,
>consulting at about 30 companies (now retired).  Maybe working with
>others without conflict on silly issues, had something to do with it.

I find nothing silly about clarity or the lack thereof. Imagine the
problems a project could face because person A was too lazy to
interleave post, and person B was tolerant of it and didn't ask enough
"what do you mean by" questions.

>
>This message would normally have been top-posted, but was
>bottom-posted to avoid offending or irritating people here. Seriously.

Thanks! Your message was crystal clear and easy to respond to.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques

On 2021-06-09 14:41:47 -0700, Dean Gibson (DB Administrator) wrote: They have probably never known anything else, so they didn't "adapt" to
it.

> I suppose it comes from the practice in those environs when paper memos were
> the norm, & if you needed to attach the contents of other paper memos to your
> own for context, you stapled them to the BACK of your own.

Yes, that's also my theory. That made a lot of sense with paper,
especially before photocopiers were invented, and you simply added your
memo to the file and then passed the whole file to the next person.

Makes much less sense in an electronic medium where you can copy and
delete without scissors and glue.

> Of course, wherever (top/bottom) one posts, trimming is important, but it's far
> less important with top-posting.  You usually don't have to scroll down to get
> the immediate context, & if you do, you have less far to scroll. 

I know at least one person who insists that you never trim anything,
because he wants to keep only the last mail in each thread, so of course
that mail must contain everything. Of course that breaks down as soon as
somebody replies to some other mail than the most recent one. Don't know
how he deals with that.

> I wonder about the tolerance of the world we live in.  Somehow, I can deal with
> top-posting, bottom-posting, middle-posting, HTML eMail, straight-text eMails,
> 80-column eMails, variable-width eMails, occasional ALL CAPS eMails, & stupid
> multi-line signatures, all without getting my tail in a knot over it.

I can deal with it. Especially when I'm paid for it. I think it's a
waste of my time (but if somebody else pays ...) and it is inefficient,
as it is very easy to overlook relevant details in that ever-growing
mess. I never understood why so many people hated e-mail as a
communication medium. Now I do.

        hp

--
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Story must make more sense than reality.
|_|_) |                    |
| |   |         |    -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/  |       challenge!"

On 2021-06-10 01:23:34 -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> Dean Gibson (DB Administrator) said on Wed, 9 Jun 2021 14:41:47 -0700
> >Top-posting has been the predominantly common practice in the business
> >& government world for decades, & it is easy to adapt to. 
>
> OF COURSE! In business you need the CYA of having the entire discussion
> archived,

You can archive more than one e-mail per thread, you know :-)

        hp

--
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Story must make more sense than reality.
|_|_) |                    |
| |   |         |    -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/  |       challenge!"

On 6/10/21 12:08 PM, Basques, Bob (CI-StPaul) wrote:

> Alternatively, where I deem appropriate I will do inline
> posting/clipping, but I always announce that at the top (posting) of the
> response.

"where you deem appropriate" you will do that, and where "I deem
appropriate" I will stop reading whatever you thought was important.

Want to get a message to me? Think less about what you deem appropriate.


Best Regards, Jan

--
Jan Wieck
Postgres User since 1994