On Wed, Dec 08, 2010 at 07:41:58AM -0500, Steve Clark wrote: > Why do we bottom post? People have said so you can read what has been > already written before you reply. > But all the time people <snip> out big sections. That IMHO defeats the > reason for bottom posting. Top posting ruins the flow of the standard English written language and makes following conversation topics awkward, at best. A classic example of this is the following section: A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? > > A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. > > > Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? > > > > A: Top-posting. > > > > > Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? As you can see the above makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and makes following the topic next to impossible. As far as trimming out extraneous junk goes... if it is done properly only non-relevant portions of quoted text is removed; when you don't trim you end up with cascade replies that contain all text from all previous replies where the message authors have not removed material. It's a complete waste of resources to have to process what amounts to junk. John -- Much of what looks like rudeness in hacker circles is not intended to give offense. Rather, it's the product of the direct, cut-through-the-bullshit communications style that is natural to people who are more concerned about solving problems than making others feel warm and fuzzy. http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20101208/53411154/attachment-0005.sig>