"Top posting" (was: Test messages to -questions)

Greg 'groggy' Lehey grog at FreeBSD.org
Mon Jul 4 05:49:39 GMT 2005


[resequenced, trimmed]

On Friday,  1 July 2005 at 14:01:13 +0000, Bryan Maynard wrote:
> On Friday 01 July 2005 06:56 pm, Lane wrote:
>>  On Friday 01 July 2005 13:30, Robert Marella wrote:
>>> I agree. I am much more annoyed by top posters.
>>
>>  The only thing about email that annoys me is spam.  While I'm a
>>  subscriber to freebsd-questions, top posting, incomplete
>>  questions, inflammatory commentary, etc. is just the price I pay
>>  for getting a steady stream of "Aha's," and hardly seems worth the
>>  effort to develop an emotional viewpoint.
>>
>>  Although "thought police" who say "do this" and "don't do that"
>>  wear me out sometimes with their email.
>
> Pardon my newness, but what is "top posting"?

This sounds like a troll, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
"Top posting" is a term that some people use to describe part of what
you did with your reply: put the reply out of sequence at the top of
the message instead of where it fits in logically in the thread.  Some
people call the latter "bottom posting", but that's inaccurate and
also wrong.

You apparently haven't read http://www.lemis.com/questions.html .
Amongst other things, it states:

  7.  Include relevant text from the original message. Trim it to the
      minimum, but don't overdo it. It should still be possible for
      somebody who didn't read the original message to understand what
      you're talking about.
  8.  Use some technique to identify which text came from the original
      message, and which text you add. I personally find that
      prepending "> " to the original message works best. Leaving
      white space after the "> " and leave empty lines between your
      text and the original text both make the result more readable.
  9.  Put your response in the correct place (after the text to which
      it replies). It's very difficult to read a thread of responses
      where each reply comes before the text to which it replies.

Greg
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