As in many other computer-related stuff there are two sides to this subject.
The so-called 'right way' is bottom posting. However I suspect this is really more for private emails and not Group lists.
Either way, private or a list, I don't like bottom posts. One reason is because most folks don't bother to trim out all of the unnessary and irelevant junk, including a lot of these >>>>. Sometimes there is so much junk I have to scroll and scroll to get to the sender's respnse. I must confess, I don't always bother. Because I sometimes receive as many as 300 or more messages a day, I don't have a lot of time to go through a bunch of junk.
On lists like Yahoo Groups there is always a lot of other stuff appended to each message. This includes a number of links pertaining to each group's special interests and of course the group's home page. (There is also the way to unsubscribe which unfortunately some people never read and instead of unsubscribing themselves, they whine for someone else to do it for them.)
Some people do trim out the unnessary junk and while they are trimming, they remove everything. Unless this message comes through immediately after the first post or soon thereafter, often I have no idea what that trimmed post was about. This causes me to have to waste time searching for the relevant message. Again, I don't always bother.
One HUGE aggravation about bottom posting is when someone responds to a post just to say "Thank you" and I have to scroll through everything that went on before just to see "Thank you". I eventually stop reading messages this person posts and I suspect I am not alone.
I try to remain open minded about bottom posting, but sometimes it's hard. Some people are very responsible about how they trim and those posts are mostly easy for me to read. Other folks just can't seem to grasp the concept of trimming and I soon learn whose to read and whose to ignore.
Some email programs will automatically put replies on the bottom of a message. One such program is Eudora, which is why I don't use Eudora for lists.
There is another method of replying to list posts; this is replying inline. Some of these inline replies work very well and others are such a disaster that I give up trying to read them. Some email programs make this easier to manage, but my email (Outlook) is not one of them. I suspect some people use colored text to reply in line, but if the group/list is plain text, the colors don't come through.
I wonder, do you top post or bottom post?
Martha
3 comments:
Martha,
About bottom posting .. I agree. I have been "writing" online for about 20 years now ... yep, all the way back in 1984, when Prodigy started, I got an account there.
However, I would let you know that you are not correct about Eudora always forcing bottom posting, you can change that behavior. I like Eudora, although now I have switched to Thunderbird on my work laptop, which comes configured for bottom posting too ... but it can be changed too.
Just thought you would like to know.
Much worse than bottom or top posting, is something from a mail serv like Yahoo where it's mixed.
This means someone that comes in the thread later, has no idea without finding hopefully all the posts on web site of the serv to piece together the evolution of the thread.
Then what about those that clip and snip? That really breaks the thread.
I am guilty of all these things so I should just go back to my sty and be quite. ;@)
I just wanted to say Hi because this is the first time I am ever posting on a forum. I do not know if this is allowed or not to post here, but I hope I won't be banned from me. So be happy for me that I finally achieved posting on a forum after many years of neglect!
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