Please adjust your trim settings.

Normal people talking in a group do not repeat the entire conversation every
time they respond.

I have been a usenet denizen since 1991 and have always been annoyed by
bottom posting. But nowadays especially, the commonly used POP3 or web
email client (not a specialized usenet news reader client) expects that
you'll be looking at the content from the top down.

Making a post small is not rocket science.

LM

"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote in message
newsSaRh.21327 Bottom posting IS the way to go. That IS how normal
people respond.

"Lee McGee" wrote in message
...

Normal people talking in a group do not repeat the entire conversation
every time they respond.

I have been a usenet denizen since 1991 and have always been annoyed by
bottom posting. But nowadays especially, the commonly used POP3 or web
email client (not a specialized usenet news reader client) expects that
you'll be looking at the content from the top down.

Making a post small is not rocket science.


Agreed.

On Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:18:37 -0700, Lee McGee wrote:

Making a post small is not rocket science.

This is true, but orthogonal to the idea of top/bottom posting.

People don't normally repeat parts of a conversation, but conversations
are normally far quicker than USENET dialog. Thus, reminders can help.

More, dialogs in person are far more interactive than on USENET. A speaks
a little, B speaks a little, etc. Because of the latency of USENET, that
doesn't work as well here. So A "speaks" (writes) a bunch, and then B
replies. Often, a given reply message actually consists of multiple
replies to multiple points made by A.

It makes sense in that case to interleave cited text with response.
Answers typically follow questions (certain TV shows excepted {8^),
so the response to a cited bit of text follows the cited bit of text.

Thus, bottom-posting.

The message with a lone citation is just a degenerate case, and shouldn't
be treated differently.

The utility of this becomes even more apparent as A (or C) replies to
B. Nested citations (trimmed as much as possible, of course) help to
retain the context for readers (esp. given that USENET is neither reliable
nor ordered), but it requires far more work to understand if the response
precedes the cited text.

- Andrew

On Thu, 5 Apr 2007 14:18:37 -0700, "Lee McGee" wrote:

Normal people talking in a group do not repeat the entire conversation every
time they respond.

No, but they don't respond to a comment two or three days later, either.

If you've got an active topic, you don't know what specific comments the poster
is responding to. Top posting is like telling the punch line of the joke
*first*.

HOWEVER...I will agree that bottom posting relies more heavily on the poster
trimming the previous comments. If you're too lazy to trim, then by all means,
top post.

Ron Wanttaja