O.T. Actual airline pilot conversations

Top posting is not inherently enefarious, but like any tool, it can be used for good or for evil. In cases where the response requires context, it is
good to give a hint of the context before the reply by quoting a well selected part of the original post, and posting your reply below. Often the
post has already been read (though forgotten) by the reader, but often it has not yet reached the reader and the context is essential or your own
point gets lost.

However, if your post stands on its own even in the absence of context, then it is often better to top post. Those who want additional context can
see it below, but most people will not need this context and can just move on or reply after seeing your words. Most people will not need this
context =because= your post is self-contained; if your post is not self contained then obviously this doesn't apply in that case.

I suppose that problems arise because one =thinks= their post is self contained, (after all, the poster knows the context) but it in fact is not. I
won't venture a guess as to how many people think how many posts are how far past that line, except to say that it appears that enough do to sustain
this usenet perpetual motion machine.

Never confuse motion with action.
Never confuse action with results.

And never confuse results with what you wanted in the first place.

Jose
(note - I only follow rec.aviation.piloting, of the 3 groups I replied to)

ShawnD2112 wrote on 11/15/2004 22:47:

I've never understood why top posting is seen as such an evil thing. What am I missing?


A: No.
Q: Should I include quotations after my reply?

Or, in other words, top-posting reverses the normal flow of reading.

-Joe


--
Freedom. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

If I understand this correctly then your previous messages was a 'top post',
as is the one I'm sending right now. Is that correct?

Personally I see absolutely nothing wrong with this type of posting as 1)
the reader does not have to scroll through god knows how much text to read
the new reply that he clicked on, and 2) if they failed to read the
original or have forgotten it, they can then scroll down to catch up.

What seems particularly annoying to me is when people post the original at
the top of their reply and I have to scroll through all that just to get to
their response. If the original was only a line or two, it's no big deal,
but often it goes on and on and it gets tiresome and annoying to have to
scroll through it over and over with each response.

There are a few names that I recognize on this board who are notorious for
doing this and when I recognize them, I simply mark them as read and move
right past them without reading. I'm curious why people think this is
necessary or helpful. Is it something with the way that some readers are set
up?

I have read this newsgroup for many years and I cant recall ever forgetting
what a topic was about once I've seen the topic. I suppose if I did forget,
all I'd have to do is go back to the original and read it (once) to refresh
my memory, not each time someone replies.

I'll stick to this type of posting unless someone can explain why it's
better to repost the entire message at the top of my reply.

PJ


============================================
Here's to the duck who swam a lake and never lost a feather,
May sometime another year, we all be back together.
JJW
============================================


"Jose" wrote in message
om...
Top posting is not inherently enefarious, but like any tool, it can be
used for good or for evil. In cases where the response requires context, it
is
good to give a hint of the context before the reply by quoting a well
selected part of the original post, and posting your reply below. Often the
post has already been read (though forgotten) by the reader, but often it
has not yet reached the reader and the context is essential or your own
point gets lost.

However, if your post stands on its own even in the absence of context,
then it is often better to top post. Those who want additional context can
see it below, but most people will not need this context and can just move
on or reply after seeing your words. Most people will not need this
context =because= your post is self-contained; if your post is not self
contained then obviously this doesn't apply in that case.

I suppose that problems arise because one =thinks= their post is self
contained, (after all, the poster knows the context) but it in fact is not.
I
won't venture a guess as to how many people think how many posts are how
far past that line, except to say that it appears that enough do to sustain
this usenet perpetual motion machine.

Never confuse motion with action.
Never confuse action with results.

And never confuse results with what you wanted in the first place.

Jose
(note - I only follow rec.aviation.piloting, of the 3 groups I replied to)

ShawnD2112 wrote on 11/15/2004 22:47:

I've never understood why top posting is seen as such an evil thing.
What am I missing?


A: No.
Q: Should I include quotations after my reply?

Or, in other words, top-posting reverses the normal flow of reading.

-Joe


--
Freedom. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"PJ Hunt" wrote:

If I understand this correctly then your previous messages was a 'top
post', as is the one I'm sending right now. Is that correct? [...]

Indeed.

I'll stick to this type of posting unless someone can explain why it's
better to repost the entire message at the top of my reply.

PJ,

your message nicely points to the core of the argument. In general, top-
posting reverses the normal flow of a (usenet) discussion and thus should
be avoided whenever possible. However if people cannot be bothered to trim
the quoted message down to the essential parts, then sifting through (long)
bottom-posts becomes even more annoying than reading top-posts.

Greetings,
Markus

On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 21:14:55 -0900, "PJ Hunt"
wrote:


I'll stick to this type of posting unless someone can explain why it's
better to repost the entire message at the top of my reply.

That's fine - a lot of us won't see it anyway.

Thank you for that well thought out informative response to my post.

PJ

============================================
Here's to the duck who swam a lake and never lost a feather,
May sometime another year, we all be back together.
JJW
============================================


"Bob Ward" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 21:14:55 -0900, "PJ Hunt"
wrote:


I'll stick to this type of posting unless someone can explain why it's
better to repost the entire message at the top of my reply.

That's fine - a lot of us won't see it anyway.

[Previous text and attributions tidied somewhat, but sequence
deliberately retained]

PJ Hunt wrote:

Thank you for that well thought out informative response to my post.

Bob Ward wrote:
PJ Hunt wrote:

I'll stick to this type of posting unless someone can explain why
it's better to repost the entire message at the top of my reply.

That's fine - a lot of us won't see it anyway.

Do you see what has happened here?

Simplifying somewhat, the structure is something like:

Comment 2

Original text

Comment 1

Yuck!

It is clearly preferable to maintain a *consistent* pattern, either
*always* placing new text before old ("top-posting"), or *always*
placing new text after old ("bottom-posting").

For *very good* historical reasons, the convention on Usenet is to
place new text *after* the old text on which you are commenting,
snipping out *surplus* old text and, when commenting on a number of
fragments, placing each comment immediately after the relevant bit
of the old text.

This way, reading an article from top to bottom should make sense
in a question-and-answer kind of way. Readers who are sufficiently
familiar with the thread can skip over the quoted text, but it will
generally be available for reference simply by looking a little way
up the screen, rather as one sometimes looks back at the previous
paragraph in a book.

*One* of the reasons for quoting and commenting in this way is that
Usenet articles are *not* guaranteed to arrive at a newsserver in
the "correct" order - heck, they are not *guaranteed* to arrive at
all - and propagation delays can be quite substantial: Google take
their time even now, and once upon a time delays measured in *days*
were common.

In the early days of Usenet, *slow* and *expensive* net connections
were very common, which made snipping out excess quoted material a
Very Good Thing. Things aren't *as bad* these days, but some users
are still on slowish connections where extra bytes cost extra bucks,
so good snippage is still very good practice.

Usenet and email are two *very* different media: Usenet is a form of
*broadcast* medium where readers often find themselves dealing with
fragments of *many* threads at once; email is basically a one-to-one
medium (yes, spammers abuse it as a broadcast medium) in which you
can be far more certain that your correspondent is already familiar
with the topic of your reply, so that *appending* the previous text
for reference makes more sense. That said, interleaving old and new
text in email responses can be very useful - particularly where the
discussion *is* a series of questions and answers.

This is a bit longer than I had anticipated, but I hope you can now
see why "bottom-posting" is conventional on Usenet.

Actually, "bottom-posting" is conventional on Usenet only among people who
say "bottom-posting" is conventional on Usenet.

Most everyone else top-posts. If you are reading a top-posted thread, you
open a message, read the top few lines, then move to the next message, no
scrolling to the bottom required.

Much more convenient...


"Robert Briggs" wrote in message
...
[Previous text and attributions tidied somewhat, but sequence
deliberately retained]

PJ Hunt wrote:

Thank you for that well thought out informative response to my post.

Bob Ward wrote:
PJ Hunt wrote:

I'll stick to this type of posting unless someone can explain why
it's better to repost the entire message at the top of my reply.

That's fine - a lot of us won't see it anyway.

Do you see what has happened here?

Simplifying somewhat, the structure is something like:

Comment 2

Original text

Comment 1

Yuck!

It is clearly preferable to maintain a *consistent* pattern, either
*always* placing new text before old ("top-posting"), or *always*
placing new text after old ("bottom-posting").

For *very good* historical reasons, the convention on Usenet is to
place new text *after* the old text on which you are commenting,
snipping out *surplus* old text and, when commenting on a number of
fragments, placing each comment immediately after the relevant bit
of the old text.

This way, reading an article from top to bottom should make sense
in a question-and-answer kind of way. Readers who are sufficiently
familiar with the thread can skip over the quoted text, but it will
generally be available for reference simply by looking a little way
up the screen, rather as one sometimes looks back at the previous
paragraph in a book.

*One* of the reasons for quoting and commenting in this way is that
Usenet articles are *not* guaranteed to arrive at a newsserver in
the "correct" order - heck, they are not *guaranteed* to arrive at
all - and propagation delays can be quite substantial: Google take
their time even now, and once upon a time delays measured in *days*
were common.

In the early days of Usenet, *slow* and *expensive* net connections
were very common, which made snipping out excess quoted material a
Very Good Thing. Things aren't *as bad* these days, but some users
are still on slowish connections where extra bytes cost extra bucks,
so good snippage is still very good practice.

Usenet and email are two *very* different media: Usenet is a form of
*broadcast* medium where readers often find themselves dealing with
fragments of *many* threads at once; email is basically a one-to-one
medium (yes, spammers abuse it as a broadcast medium) in which you
can be far more certain that your correspondent is already familiar
with the topic of your reply, so that *appending* the previous text
for reference makes more sense. That said, interleaving old and new
text in email responses can be very useful - particularly where the
discussion *is* a series of questions and answers.

This is a bit longer than I had anticipated, but I hope you can now
see why "bottom-posting" is conventional on Usenet.

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 14:23:29 -0600, "Bill Denton"
proclaimed:
Actually, "bottom-posting" is conventional on Usenet only among people who
say "bottom-posting" is conventional on Usenet.

Most everyone else top-posts. If you are reading a top-posted thread, you
open a message, read the top few lines, then move to the next message, no
scrolling to the bottom required.

Much more convenient...


Answer: Because it disrupts the flow of thought.
Question: Why is top posting such a pain in the ass?

It's just like paper files.

Most people who don't have time to waste post the latest document on
top.

Those who have nothing better to do with their time open the fastener,
take out all the documents, put the latest on the bottom and then
replace all the previous ones so that everything is in sequence. It
keeps them happy and occupied!

Dave,



Bill Denton wrote:

Actually, "bottom-posting" is conventional on Usenet only among people who
say "bottom-posting" is conventional on Usenet.

Most everyone else top-posts. If you are reading a top-posted thread, you
open a message, read the top few lines, then move to the next message, no
scrolling to the bottom required.

Much more convenient...

"Robert Briggs" wrote in message
...
[Previous text and attributions tidied somewhat, but sequence
deliberately retained]

PJ Hunt wrote:

Thank you for that well thought out informative response to my post.

Bob Ward wrote:
PJ Hunt wrote:

I'll stick to this type of posting unless someone can explain why
it's better to repost the entire message at the top of my reply.

That's fine - a lot of us won't see it anyway.

Do you see what has happened here?

Simplifying somewhat, the structure is something like:

Comment 2

Original text

Comment 1

Yuck!

It is clearly preferable to maintain a *consistent* pattern, either
*always* placing new text before old ("top-posting"), or *always*
placing new text after old ("bottom-posting").

For *very good* historical reasons, the convention on Usenet is to
place new text *after* the old text on which you are commenting,
snipping out *surplus* old text and, when commenting on a number of
fragments, placing each comment immediately after the relevant bit
of the old text.

This way, reading an article from top to bottom should make sense
in a question-and-answer kind of way. Readers who are sufficiently
familiar with the thread can skip over the quoted text, but it will
generally be available for reference simply by looking a little way
up the screen, rather as one sometimes looks back at the previous
paragraph in a book.

*One* of the reasons for quoting and commenting in this way is that
Usenet articles are *not* guaranteed to arrive at a newsserver in
the "correct" order - heck, they are not *guaranteed* to arrive at
all - and propagation delays can be quite substantial: Google take
their time even now, and once upon a time delays measured in *days*
were common.

In the early days of Usenet, *slow* and *expensive* net connections
were very common, which made snipping out excess quoted material a
Very Good Thing. Things aren't *as bad* these days, but some users
are still on slowish connections where extra bytes cost extra bucks,
so good snippage is still very good practice.

Usenet and email are two *very* different media: Usenet is a form of
*broadcast* medium where readers often find themselves dealing with
fragments of *many* threads at once; email is basically a one-to-one
medium (yes, spammers abuse it as a broadcast medium) in which you
can be far more certain that your correspondent is already familiar
with the topic of your reply, so that *appending* the previous text
for reference makes more sense. That said, interleaving old and new
text in email responses can be very useful - particularly where the
discussion *is* a series of questions and answers.

This is a bit longer than I had anticipated, but I hope you can now
see why "bottom-posting" is conventional on Usenet.

"Bill Denton" wrote

Actually, "bottom-posting" is conventional on Usenet only among people who
say "bottom-posting" is conventional on Usenet.


So why is it that you se the MAJORITY of usenet posts, using bottom posting
mixed in style? Does that not matter at all to you?


Most everyone else top-posts. If you are reading a top-posted thread, you
open a message, read the top few lines, then move to the next message, no
scrolling to the bottom required.


If, and only if, you only have one comment to make. Top posting does not
work any other way.


Much more convenient...


The only thing convenient thing to do, is for you to **** people off, as you
are doing by your illogical insistence that you are right, and the other 90%
are wrong.

Right now, I think it will be more logical for me to plonk yur a**.
--
Jim in NC


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