On Tue, 12 Apr 2011 07:49:17 +0100 Tim Chown <tjc@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
Call me and old 'hard case' - but I prefer that when I get information via email, that if possible, the relevant information show up immediately.
Right. And the most relevant information is the snippet being replied to in that email - or that part of the email.
Well indeed, top-posting is just so much more efficient given the volumes of email most of us probably see each day.
Indeed. It lets us filter out people who don't understand the protocol and probably have less useful information for us.
Back when receiving an email was an event, and your xbiff flag popping up was a cause for excitement, taking time to scroll/page down
Back then we also trimmed the text so that we didn't have to page down a few screens to see the reply. Then, like now, if someone can't be bothered to compose a message properly I just move on. Also back then we still read lots of messages. We just used Usenet instead of email. Now that email has supplanted Usenet for many discussion groups (a good thing IMHO) we get more mail. I find that the amount of time spent reading discussions has been pretty steady over the years. It's just the number of groups that has decreased as has the medium. The way I see it, I read many orders of magnitude more messages than I send. That tells me that the bulk of the work involved should be in composing. The work composing is multiplied by 1. The work reading can be multiplied by many thousands.
changed; bottom-posted email is now an annoyance to most just as a slow-loading web page would be.
It's only an annoyance if you try to repeat the entire thread in each message. The basic rule is not "you must bottom post." It is "you must trim and bottom post." For more detail we have archives. -- D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@druid.net> | Democracy is three wolves http://www.druid.net/darcy/ | and a sheep voting on +1 416 425 1212 (DoD#0082) (eNTP) | what's for dinner.