On Thu, July 23, 2015 10:45 am, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On 07/23/2015 09:34 AM, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, July 23, 2015 8:43 am, Windsor Dave (AdP/TEF7) wrote:
>>>> -----Original Message-----
> <snip>
>>>>> Sorry for the top post, Outlook defaults strike again.....
>>>>
>>>> Outlook forces you to write above ? :-)
> <snip>
>>>
>>> Perhaps I should say instead that it "strongly encourages" top posting,
>>> and all our internal emails follow that convention.
>>>
>>> It's habit-forming.... :-)
>>
>> Well, my habit for regular e-mail exchange is "top posting" thus the
>> person reads my message thus is right to the point why this particular
>> message message was sent in a first place... But when mail lists are
>> concerned, I do an opposite, that is I follow mail lists conventions. I
>> never thought about rationale behind them, I'm just following them. I
>> believe, if some day someone gives reasons why top posting is bad in
>> case
>> of mail lists it will really be great. The only reason I can come up
>> with
>> myself would be: whoever reads message received through mail lists
>> usually
>> has no idea about previous exchange in this thread, thus needs all
>> exchange in chronological order. Which I'm not certain is a good reason,
>> so those who know and insists strongly about "no top posting" are
>> encouraged to give others the reasons behind that. Again, I'm not "top
>> posting" on the lists. However, _this_ ("top posting") is my regular way
>> in private exchange (and it has good reasons behind it).
>
> 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).
Valeri
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Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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