On 26 Feb 2008 04:43:28 -0500, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

>
>  I didn't quote everything. I quoted only relevant parts, and answered
>to each individual point.

Somehow I think that you are talking about a subject that is almost religious to
some people. I agree with you and as I did not want to quote all of the thread I
only quoted what I thought was the most relevant part. This is further
complicated by some people using a news reader and some the web interface which
does not split the thread into sub threads. Also some of us remember when
bandwidth was a serious problem.

Regards
	Stephen

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>  What you do in those cases is to complain that they should only quote
> relevant parts of the original post, not everything.

That doesn't work though, because often new people get added to the cc- or 
to-list if the subject shifts towards something they should know about.  In 
that case the new people need to be able to recall the previous 
communication that led up the current reply.  Or if someone just deleted the 
old emails because it didn't really involve them, but then they needed to 
reply to some comment.  It's just useful to keep all the quoted text.

And besides, if the only reason to delete parts of the quoted text is so 
that people don't have to scroll so far to the bottom to read the reply, 
then why not just write the reply at the top?

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scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> And besides, if the only reason to delete parts of the quoted text is so 
> that people don't have to scroll so far to the bottom to read the reply, 
> then why not just write the reply at the top?

  Because then people don't know what you are replying to.

  Note that "writing after the quote" is not the same thing as
"bottom-posting" (although in some cases the result may be the same,
but not always).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Scott has a point when he talked about "Work Emails" But then that is different
from News groups IMO.

On 26 Feb 2008 07:43:47 -0500, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

>scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
>> And besides, if the only reason to delete parts of the quoted text is so 
>> that people don't have to scroll so far to the bottom to read the reply, 
>> then why not just write the reply at the top?
>
>  Because then people don't know what you are replying to.
>
>  Note that "writing after the quote" is not the same thing as
>"bottom-posting" (although in some cases the result may be the same,
>but not always).

Scott has a point when he talked about "Work Emails" But then that is different
from News groups IMO.

Regards
	Stephen

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>  Because then people don't know what you are replying to.

Of course people know what you are replying to, and if they have forgotten 
(eg a reply to an email from weeks or months ago) then they just read below 
to see what the previous message was.

Just imagine this was an email conversation we were having here, and not a 
newsgroup thread.  You are trying to say we should post the same way in 
both.  Well what happens if I want to cc this reply to my friend Bob because 
I know he is interested in this sort of thing and will have a comment?  I 
will have to forward him a large number of different emails so that he can 
try and piece together the chain of events that led to the quote above.

The alternative is that we just leave all the replies underneath and write a 
reply at the top.  It's easy for everyone as they only need to read the 
first reply (or scroll down one or two pages if they have forgotten what's 
going on), but the beauty is that if I want to forward it to Bob, I just hit 
forward and add "Bob, see the emails below for details", and he instantly 
has the entire conversation.  Ditto if I want to cc him in on one reply, and 
then he can hit reply and add his comments too.

This is how email works in business, it just wouldn't work if you tried to 
do it like usenet.

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> I use inbetween posting occasionally in emails, but always top post 
> something like "See my comments below in blue" - otherwise I just 
> top-post which seems to be the norm for email.  Everyone I've seen that 
> does email top-posts their reply, so it would really screw up thing if I 
> bottom-posted, plus it would mean everyone would get annoyed having to 
> scroll through 10 messages before they got to my text.

People top-post in email due to the stupid email clients they use, which 
put the cursor on the beginning of the message.

It's even more stupid when they put the cursor at the beginning, and add 
the signature at the end (yep, *after* the quoted messages).

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scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> >  Because then people don't know what you are replying to.

> Of course people know what you are replying to, and if they have forgotten 
> (eg a reply to an email from weeks or months ago) then they just read below 
> to see what the previous message was.

  And if in the typical top-posting style the quote below is 50 pages long,
they can easily find the single line to which this poster is replying to.

  Somehow you assume that all quotes are short and quick to read.

> Just imagine this was an email conversation we were having here, and not a 
> newsgroup thread.  You are trying to say we should post the same way in 
> both.  Well what happens if I want to cc this reply to my friend Bob because 
> I know he is interested in this sort of thing and will have a comment?  I 
> will have to forward him a large number of different emails so that he can 
> try and piece together the chain of events that led to the quote above.

  And he would have to read the entire thread in reverse order, from bottom
to top, which is exactly what the signature I quoted criticizes. You are
just proving my point.

> but the beauty is that if I want to forward it to Bob, I just hit 
> forward and add "Bob, see the emails below for details", and he instantly 
> has the entire conversation.

  In reverse order, which is exactly opposite to the natural order in
which people read. The point of that signature exactly.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> Of course people know what you are replying to, and if they have 
>> forgotten
>> (eg a reply to an email from weeks or months ago) then they just read 
>> below
>> to see what the previous message was.
>
>  And if in the typical top-posting style the quote below is 50 pages long,
> they can easily find the single line to which this poster is replying to.

I don't know any emails we have here that are 50 pages long.  If it's longer 
than a paragraph or two it's usually too importnant for an email and better 
explained and archived in a word or powerpoint document.  And the subject 
being discussed/replied to is in the subject line.  Unlike newsgroup posts, 
email conversations don't usually go off-topic from when they started.

>  And he would have to read the entire thread in reverse order, from bottom
> to top, which is exactly what the signature I quoted criticizes. You are
> just proving my point.

But that is a minor occurance compared to everyone else who reads every 
email.  Why force everyone else to follow an awkward process for every 
email, just so that Bob can read the history in top-to-bottom order, should 
he wish to do so?

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Doctor John wrote:
> 
> Now all those using M$ OE have no excuse for top posting any more :-)
> 
> John
> 

For all those who are arguing about whether its good or bad to top post,
I quote RFC1855:
> If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
>       summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just
>       enough text of the original to give a context.  This will make
>       sure readers understand when they start to read your response.
>       Since NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the
>       postings from one host to another, it is possible to see a
>       response to a message before seeing the original.  Giving context
>       helps everyone.  But do not include the entire original!

If you don't know what an RFC is, tough ;-)

John

-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

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On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:56:35 +0000, Doctor John <doc### [at] gmailcom> wrote:

>If you don't know what an RFC is, tough ;-)

Remote Function Call?

Regards
	Stephen

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