On Nov 6, 2007 1:16 PM, Collin Kidder <adderd@kkmfg.com> wrote:
> This is offtopic but there is nothing wrong with top posting. Is there a
> mail list policy on it or are you just picky about it?
OK, I was being a bit flippant with my last response. The reasoning
on technical mailing lists for preferring inline or bottom posting is
several fold. One is the reason I posted, that the answers being out
of order tend to make it difficult to follow the flow of the
conversation, especially if the conversation has, until then, been
inline / bottom posted.
But the other reason is that top posters are often the biggest
offenders of not editing their replies. there's nothing like seeing a
one line reply to a 500 line conversation.
When inline posting, one can delete the parts of the converstation
that they aren't replying to so that it is obvious what parts they are
replying to and keep their post concise.
Basically, in a technical mailing list, one is trying to converse in
the most efficient and concise manner. Top posting does not help to
accomplish this goal, because a top post has no context within the
conversation.
OTOH, sometimes, a top post is appropriate. I.e. someone posts a long
article explaining how some arcane part of the database works, and a
person replies with a top post of "Thanks for the great article, it
really explained a lot" and then deletes MOST of the article since it
isn't needed for the reply.
So it's not really a hard and fast rule, it's more a guideline on a
technical list.
RFC 1855 is a bit old but still makes some good points
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855