Top posting vs posting styles

[Andrew Douglas Pitonyak]

It seems to be an issue where one's view point is attacked with 
religious zeal.  The fact that people feel so strongly on both sides is 
an indicator to me that it is nothing more than personal preference.  
The posting style used affects the best way to follow the thread. If you 
leave everything in every response, then it is easier to read from the 
top to the bottom to understand everything if bottom posting is used. If 
you read every post as it comes in, it is easier to follow if top 
posting is used unless your mail reader auto-magically hides all of the 
contained previous posts. Well, that is my opinion anyway.

A sufficient number of people bottom post that I installed a plug-in 
that hides all previous posts unless I expand them out manually. 
Annoying that I need to do that, but, otherwise, it just takes too long 
to read the emails. It is then annoying when I want to read something 
part way through, but, I don't generally complain about it.

My general approach is to reply using whatever method has already been 
used in posts. So, if there is already a response, I will make my 
response to be top or bottom based on the previous responses. 
Consistency within a single message strikes me as a good choice. I make 
random decisions of top or bottom based on not much when I am the first 
responder. I am more likely to top post for a person that appears to be 
a "newbie" since it seems to me that people without exposure to mailing 
lists are more inclined to to top post. I don't know if that is because 
that seems to be the way that outlook operates or that is simply what is 
more natural for them to use. I do know that if I used outlook from work 
to respond to these messages, it would be a bunch of extra effort to do 
anything but top post.




-- 
Andrew Pitonyak
My Macro Document: http://www.pitonyak.org/AndrewMacro.odt
Info:  http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php