Top-posting shenanigans (was: Re: ASR33 $1000+ And Counting...)

From: Zane H. Healy <healyzh_at_aracnet.com>
Date: Thu Feb 24 14:41:05 2005

Jules wrote
> On Thu, 2005-02-24 at 12:49 -0600, David H. Barr wrote:
>
> > The REAL One and Only Way is, of course, interleaved posting. I mean
> > you paste in the original statement or question, respond to that, then
> > paste in the next bit. Of course that takes TIME....
>
> That's just a specialised form of bottom-posting though :-)

Personally I think of it and bottom posting as one in the same :^)

> IME *typically* the people who top-post come from an environment where
> they've only ever used Outlook as their email client. I'm not sure why
> that link exists, but it's been my observation.

It's simple, it's because MS exhibits their typical arrogance and makes it
difficult for users of their trash to conform to standards. This is one of
the reasons why at work email from my MS Lookout account gets sucked over to
my Unix account. I primarily use MS Lookout for email that has been so
corrupted by MS Software that it is unreadable in 'elm'.

> Correct-posting arguments seem a lot more common than they used to be
> though. I do remember the odd top-poster in usenet and mailing lists ten
> years ago but it was a very rare occurence.

A couple reasons for this. The biggest is all the LUsers using MS Lookout,
and MS Lookout Express, and also because it's no longer painful for them
when you hit their mailbox with the applicable RFC's and documents on
Netiquette :^)

On most mailing lists you can't really expect the people to know how to post
in the appropriate manner as most can barely use a computer, but one would
think that the people on this list are computer literate. It just goes to
prove what I'm saying for years, that is that people should be required
to get a License before they buy a computer, and connect it to the Internet.

                Zane

PS does anyone know how on earth to get MS Lookout to default to a proper
replying behavior rather than its top-posting nonsense?
Received on Thu Feb 24 2005 - 14:41:05 GMT