"Ed Zollars, CPA" <ezollar[at]mindspring.com> wrote:
- quote -

Dear Ed,

Your mind's not right<g> .

There are two main modes of thread reading - Scan and Review.

When scanning, there can be no argument that top-posting is
simply more efficient at transferring the information
contained within a thread from posters to readers. Original
question posted with all responses either at the top for
immediate access in readers' preview panes or noted to be
inline. As far as your admonishments to snip, let's look at
that issue. You folks are pros, right? You time is valuable,
right? Bandwidth is cheap, right? Why should you be required
to perform a mundane chore like snipping messages just to
post your response? I would much rather you "waste" a couple
hundred bytes of redundant text than reduce the quality and
especially the quantity of your professional judgment on the
issues raised. In the real world, you (meaning the vast
majority of MTM posters), do not snip as you rightly see it
as a waste of your time. You therefore push the inefficiency
of bottom-posting onto readers. This is clearly a suboptimal
solution.

In Review mode, specific thread entries are archived for
later access. When content in this mode is subjected to
significant snipping, a great deal of context is lost,
making both the (snipped) question and the response appear
muddled or even incomprehensible. Also, as someone else
pointed out, it is important to have a complete record of
what was said on both sides if the message is to be
archived.

The object of this group is the exchange of information.
Top-posting maximizes the velocity of info exchange while
retaining the "record" for posterity at the cost of an
insignificant amount of bandwidth. A single graphic on a
website would cover all the redundant quoting on this group
for a week! Your prescription for bottom-posting belongs to
another era - one focused on minimizing connect time and the
amount of data transfer. We are beyond that era and it is
long past time that you and Mr. Adams re-evaluate your
positions. I'm confident that, given fair consideration, you
will conclude an upgrade to top-posting is in order. Then,
your mind will be right.

Austin

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I think top-posting is vulgar.

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"Ed Zollars, CPA" <ezollar[at]mindspring.com> wrote:

- quote -

Yes -- that was/is a VERY good rule. (Maybe with a "floor",
allowing a half-screen's worth of quoted material to set the
stage, before the quoted-to-original ratio starts being
applied.)

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Austin K. Williams wrote:

- quote -

The best approach is to simply *snip out* anything not
directly relevant to your post. That is, you don't top post
or bottom post, but rather *inline* post your reply.

Your argument for top posting is primarily an argument for
not including any of the text--after the 14th time I don't
think I need to be reminded of the initial question--or,
even better, the *entire* thread.

As another post noted, top posters seem to almost *never*
edit out the excess.

Back in the "good old days" <grin> a number of groups had
standards that would reject any post that had more quoted
lines than original text. It's still a good rule of
thumb--if you have more quoted than original text, it's time
to edit out the excess.

--
Ed Zollars, CPA
Phoenix, Arizona

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