syntax oddities

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 18 May 2018 08:38:31 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:

> On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 8:31 AM, Dennis Lee Bieber
> <wlfraed at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 17 May 2018 07:18:32 -0700, Tobiah <toby at tobiah.org> declaimed
>> the following:
>>
>>>Top posting is awesome for the reader plowing through a thread in
>>>order.  In that case the cruft at the bottom is only for occasional
>>>reference.
>>>
>>>
>>         That concept is meaningful only email between two parties,
>>         where the
>> quoted material is a "courtesy copy" for content the other party likely
>> provided a week earlier (snail mail).
> 
> And I'm not sure it's of value there either. If I emailed someone a week
> ago and s/he responds today, proper quote trimming is of great value,
> just as it is with newsgroups/mailing lists. The only time it wouldn't
> much matter is if we're going back and forth with extreme rapidity, and
> then you may as well bottom-post because it makes little difference.

Bottom-posting is infinitely more evil than top-posting.

The next time I have to scroll past fifteen pages of quoted text twelve 
layers deep, only to read "Me too!!!1!" or "LOL!!!" as the sole addition 
to the conversation, I'm going to go all Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

What we want is *inline* posting, which follows the *trimmed* posting. If 
there happens to be only a single quoted section left untrimmed (as in 
this email) it may superficially look like bottom-posting, but it isn't.

Top-posting is good for real-time rapid-fire conversations between two 
parties where the context is self-evident and you will never, ever need 
to look through the archives again.

But bottom-posting without trimming combines the worst of both strategies.


-- 
Steve