On Fri, 04 Jan 2019, ubergeek wrote:
This is one mailing list etiquette rule I don't particularly agree with. I do not want to halt to scroll to the end of a message just to see the content...
Well ...
A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. Q: Why is top posting frowned upon?
If done correctly, you don't need to jump to the end of the message, just to the place you want to reply to. An just read normally if you're not going to answer. Top posting is just adding junk at the end of the email just because the top poster is lazy and does not care a bit about other's people circumstances.
It increases the size of each email needlessly (people with crappy connections will be very happy) specially on long conversations.
We have threaded mail clients... We know the message content. "No top posting" is from the days of yore, prior to threaded client views.
We do have threaded mail clients. If you add that to a clean conversation it makes mailing lists a pleasant experience, if not is just distracting. I for example end up not even bother reading bad formatted emails (html, repetitive top posting, thread reuse ...). You can say "I'm too old for this shit".
Email communication is not the simplest and more natural, so if we "pervert" it, it becomes unusable in the end. Although that's probably just my opinion.
Again, in my opinion, is not so difficult to follow the netiquette, and it makes things a lot easier for the reader. In the end, the one who writes has to make the effort of writing the content anyway, so make it simple to read and follow ...
Oh !, and happy new year ~teammates !
Grumpy old guy over and out.