top posting (off-topic)

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 2007-11-25 19:01, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 25, 2007 at 06:56:15PM -0700, Chad Perrin wrote:
> >
> > I think it's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem: we don't really know for
> > sure whether TOFU[1] posting spurred much of the rise of illiteracy or
> > the increase of relative illiteracy on the Internet led to an increase in
> > TOFU posting.  Which came first?
>
> I forgot to include the footnote about TOFU in the preceding message.  It
> would have looked something like this:
>
> [1]: TOFU = Text Over, Fullquote Under; the most common format of top
> posted replies

The footnote was easy to understand after a quick Wikipedia search:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-posting#Top-posting

Quoting the text (so list members don't have to actually repeat the
search):

    Some maintain that top-posting is _never_ appropriate, and refer to
    it jokingly as the "TOFU" method (from the German "text oben,
    fullquote unten", sometimes translated "text over, fullquote
    under") [...]

Nice one.  I had not heard of "TOFU posting" before :)