[OT] Re: Top Posting [was: How can i use rpm to retrive a specific ...]

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 00:08 1/10/2004, you wrote:
>On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 00:20:30 -0500
>Robert L Cochran <cochranb at speakeasy.net> wrote:
>
> > Top posting is used in a lot of mailing lists, numerous organizations,
> > and millions of individuals as routine.

Racism, cannibalism, and religious persecution used to be routine too; 
what's your point?

> > There just isn't the time to
> > fuss over the perfect placement of each and every word in an email. In a
> > large group of highly paid people, the preference is to accept the
> > default settings of the email client picked by the IT department, and
> > the default settings are for top posting.

So don't be perfect. Do the important things: trim unneeded text, and keep 
a logical order in emails. I would have expected a "large group of 
highly-paid people" to be intelligent and recognize the difference between 
waste, cost, and investment, and to be smart enough to balance those.... 
your highly-paid group of people does nothing but take the path of least 
resistance.

My IT department picked Eudora, whose default is to bottom-post, and it 
conveniently leaves the cursor at the top of the message so I can start 
trimming unnecessary text. Your IT department is obviously /too/ 
highly-paid, or you all are too worried about comparing paycheck sizes.

> > In the even larger group of
> > not so well paid people, the default settings of the email client are
> > accepted without question because that is The Way It Is.

In several large (several-thousand-people-large) mailing lists on which I 
participate, this is clearly not true. In fact, the volume of discussion on 
THIS list shows that this is clearly not true.

Nice to know that you see most list members as inferior to you, by the way. 
Just lovely of you.

> > So top posting has an enormous installed client base. Top posting is
> > very much in favor in the world.

Again, the "popular is right" argument. Brilliant, I must say.

> > I myself do what most people do: accept the default mail settings and
> > get my email out the door because I have other things to do with my
> > life.

In fact what you are saying is that the 10 seconds you would spend on 
making a reasonable effort to trim (click at start of text to delete, then 
shift-click on end of text to delete) and bottom-post (ctrl-end), are more 
important to you than having 4000 people waste 30 seconds making sense of 
that message. You save 10 seconds, causing everyone else to incur a total 
collective cost of about 33 man-HOURS.

If you argued that top-posting is more logical for X reason, or that it is 
better for Y reason, I could respect your position (and you). But you are 
arguing that you prefer to be lazy, inconsiderate, rude, and selfish and 
that whatever is popular must be right. I have no respect for this 
position, and thus not much for you.


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz at simpaticus.com
http://www.simpaticus.com