top posting (off-topic)

Mark Carlson carlsonmark at gmail.com
Fri Nov 23 10:39:02 PST 2007


On 11/23/07, Fintan Gaughan <fgaughan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well i am top posting cos gmail says so :-)
>
> >From what i have been told that news group you don't top post but in
> mail list such as this one its ok to top post.
> Correct me if i am wrong but you can configure newsgroup reader to
> scroll to bottom or post where with email clients you have to scroll
> down to each one.

Rubbish.

Gmail may passively encourage top-posting, because if you use Gmail,
you don't notice one way or the other (auto-hiding "quoted" text)
until a conversation starts to wrap.

You should use proper email etiquette no matter what client you are
using, whether it is on a newsgroup or a mailing list.  By not doing
so you have two consequences:
1. It takes too much work to read your email, so it may (and will) be
ignored by many people who would otherwise have been interested.
2. You are wasting the time of anyone who chooses to read your email.
This has a cumulative effect, so that in the future, your emails will
be ignored.

-Mark C.


More information about the freebsd-chat mailing list