Re: [libreoffice-users] Top posting

Hi :)
Top posting and leaving the thread intact allows a person that is new to the thread or can't quite 
remember context, to gain the full context of the later replies.  It also allows people to only 
read the last message without having to scroll or wade through tons of stuff from previous messages 
or try to pick out other emails that have the same subject-line in order to try to make sense of 
this one.  It neatly achieves both choices without requiring the receiver to do anything other than 
scroll or not even scroll if they already remember roughly what the thread is about.  If someone 
reads the latest message and then suddenly realises that they don't seem to know the context after 
all then they can choose to quickly scroll down and hopefully spot a message that does remind them. 
 It's the way that almost all emailing works in almost every office, it's the way phones and 
hand-helds are set-up, it's the way many people on the accessibility list prefer as
 they can simply stop the screen-reader once they have got the gist of the reply.  

There was a beautiful example earlier where i replied to the message as it was written but then got 
accused of being off-topic because the alleged topic had been edited out.  Note that the criticism 
was on-list just to make sure that anyone new to the list becomes very aware that they are likely 
to be publicly humiliated if they do something slightly wrong.  Imagine queuing to buy something in 
a shop and the person at the counter punches the customer in front of you.  Would you continue to 
wait in line or leave and perhaps use a different store?  

Note also that top-posters on this list have never asked bottom-posters to post at the top.  It has 
always been bottom-posters arrogantly demanding that people conform to their own obtuse way of 
doing things.  I did try bottom-posting a few times and instead of people saying thanks they just 
further abused me, again only publicly, that i hadn't done something quite right.  If there had 
been anything approaching politeness or a gentle nudge in the right direction then i might have 
tried again but i have no interest in allowing bullies to intimidate me or anyone else.  

'Regards' from
Tom :)



--- On Wed, 22/2/12, Mirosław Zalewski <miniopl@poczta.onet.pl> wrote:

From: Mirosław Zalewski <miniopl@poczta.onet.pl>
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Top posting
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Date: Wednesday, 22 February, 2012, 19:41

On 22/02/2012 at 20:19, Tom Davies <tomdavies04@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Most people and especially those that are new to the lists will
> top-post because that is what they are most familiar with. 

Perhaps you have encountered that somewhere:

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is it such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

In my entire life I have never seen any mailing list or Usenet group with so 
much top-posting and unneeded quotes as this one. Since this is user support 
group, it should be just ignored in most cases (we want to help user, not 
bully them). But I think that people who often write to group should adapt to 
basic mailing etiquette. It isn't that hard, really.
-- 
Best regards
Mirosław Zalewski

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