OT: Top Posting

[Peter Hansen]

Call it explaining by hideous example.  It took me about sixty
seconds of jumping back and forth between the four messages to figure
out what the hell Roger was talking about.  He said "explain what?"
and I went looking in your first posting for the question you'd
asked.  Of course, it was actually a reply to Cliff's question, 
but since Cliff's is quietly hidden in between the two messages, it
wasn't at all clear what was going on.  This was aggravated by the
fact that Roger's posting showed up here first, so I hadn't even
seen Cliff's yet.

Basically, the answer (if anyone can still find the question below)
is that for a wide range of very good reasons, *both* top-posting *and*
inadequate pruning of quoted material are extremely rude, as they 
force readers to work extra hard to find the context and understand
the post.

If you want to be understood, write clearly, use punctuation and
capitalization conventionally, check your spelling and, oh yeah, prune 
unnecessary quoted material and *don't top-post*. :-)

-continuing-to-call-the-kettle-black-ly yr's,
 Peter

David LeBlanc wrote:
> 
> So far, nobody's explaining anything :D This resembles US war policy, but I
> digress ;)
> 
> David LeBlanc
> Seattle, WA USA
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: python-list-admin at python.org
> > [mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Roger
> > Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 15:06
> > To: Cliff Wells
> > Cc: python-list at python.org
> > Subject: Re: OT: Top Posting
> >
> >
> > Does it explain what?
> >
> > Roger
> > (for added emphasis)
> >
> > Around Fri,Feb 07 2003, at 03:01,  Cliff Wells, wrote:
> > >Does this explain it?
> > >
> > >
> > >On Fri, 2003-02-07 at 14:28, David LeBlanc wrote:
> > >> > -----Original Message-----
> > >> > From: python-list-admin at python.org
> > >> > [mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Wojtek Walczak
> > >> > Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 8:47
> > >> > To: python-list at python.org
> > >> > Subject: Re: ternary operator
> > >> >
> > >> <snip>
> > >> >
> > >> > ...but, well, in almost any case I'd use while loop, and
> > what's _POOR_
> > >> > for me is top-posting on Usenet rather than using i=0;while
> > ...:... :)
> > >> >
> > >>
> > >> I've never quite understood why it's considered rude to
> > top-post, especially
> > >> given that most people quote emails verbatim in their reply. I
> > already read
> > >> that, and I want the new stuff - why scroll past the old stuff
> > to get to the
> > >> new stuff? It does make sense to embed responses when you're
> > responding to
> > >> something point by point, but that's not always the form of a reply.
> > >>
> > >> I suspect that if people trimmed email responses, usenet/ml
> > bytes would drop
> > >> drastically. I wonder what the spammie hit rate on ">" is? ;)
> > >>
> > >> Dave LeBlanc
> > >> Seattle, WA USA
> > >--
> > >Cliff Wells, Software Engineer
> > >Logiplex Corporation (www.logiplex.net)
> > >(503) 978-6726 x308  (800) 735-0555 x308
> > >
> > >
> > >--
> > >http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
> >
> >
> > --
> > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list