Am 23.07.2015 um 18:06 schrieb "Valeri Galtsev" galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu:
On Thu, July 23, 2015 10:45 am, Johnny Hughes wrote:
The main reason actually is chronological order. But not just for the reply .. but for IN-LINE posting.
In a discussion where you need to make points in-line and where you only need some of and not all of the other posts, something that happens frequently on mailing lists, it is very much easier to read that type of collaborated message in chronological order.
I mean, you don't read a book or a newspaper article or a blog post from bottom to top, right? Why would you read communications from bottom to top? And it is not really even bottom to top. If you take 4 emails of 10 lines each (and 40 lines total) .. it is 75% down to 100% (original mail)... then up to 50% and read down to 75% (2nd mail), then up to 25% and read down to 50%, then up to 0% and read down to 25%. What if someone made you read blog posts that way, or books or newspaper articles?
OK, the shortest I can re-formulate your message is: on mail lists we are collectively writing the book for someone else to read (much less communicating with each other in real time ;-) Any accepted convention is better than no convention: save everybody's time. Suits me (as far as mail lists are concerned).
I consider email as an asynchronous communication, therefore "book style convention" is recommended.
-- LF