Top posting

[Jud]

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 13:04:36 +1030, "Greg 'groggy' Lehey"
<grog at FreeBSD.org> said:
> On Sunday, 21 March 2004 at 20:27:57 -0600, Kirk Strauser wrote:
> > At 2004-03-22T01:23:45Z, "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" <grog at freebsd.org> writes:
[snip]
> > I think the main difference between top- and interleaved-posting is
> > one of latency.  In an office environment, when you're replying
> > within 2 minutes of receipt of a typically short message, top
> > posting is reasonable.
> 
> Well, I'll concede that it could barely be acceptable under such
> conditions.
> 
> > On Usenet and mailing lists, where you see large, complex questions
> > that get discussed over the span of days and weeks, interleaved
> > posting is the only format that remotely makes sense.
> 
> Sure.  Now how do you know in advance to which category each message
> belongs?  Where do you draw the line?  And what's the advantage of top
> posting?

The very last thing I ever thought I would find myself doing is defending
the efficacy of top posting under any circumstances, but, well, here it
is:

Lotus Notes (at least the versions I've been using at work the last 6 or
so years) is configured to top-post, and a good thing, too.  As more
important problems move up the chain of responsibility at work, you deal
with people who have less and less time to spare.  They will want to see
the couple-of-sentence summary written by the person immediately below
them in the chain of command.  Depending on what that summary says, they
might want to check further (lower).  In rare, extraordinary situations,
they might read all the way to the last message (typically written by the
first person of managerial level to see the problem).  For these folks,
interleaving or bottom-posting would unnecessarily increase
information-gathering and decision-making time, significant if you are
making hundreds of critical decisions each day.  (Yes, there are valid
criticisms of decision-making based on this sort of
whispering-down-the-line information.)

How do you know in advance?  Where do you draw the line?  Pretty simple
in practice, really, at least in my particular situation.  At work (where
there is no choice anyway due to Lotus Notes' configuration),
particularly when writing to managerial levels above me, I would not
hesitate to top-post; even if interleaving were possible, I might think
twice about it.  For mailing lists and newsgroups, where threads can run
as long as value and interest dictate, ISTM that top-posting is a PITA at
best, death to understanding at worst.

Jud