List etiquette question

[Nifty Hat Mitch]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2004 at 10:01:15PM -0500, jack wallen wrote:
....
> immediately reply back asking why i replied with a "blank"
> reply. when i explain to them that the reply is beneath their email
> they simply say that it doesn't make sense - they know what they
> said to me.

There are contexts to all interactions.

On a public stage it is good practice to first repeat the question for
all to hear then answer the question.   This is a public stage 
for many exchanges....

In a 1:1 simple mail exchange top/ bottom it does not matter as long
as the two people involved understand.  Attachments of previous
messages often apply to this specific context.  Attachments are
trouble here but that is a different toppic.

In a threaded single Q single A discussion the first message
seen is the question and then answers follow ... top posting
makes sense.

In a complex discussion as we often see here it is very valuable to
organize things so a chronology of information and discussion
is not lost.

When people limit themselves to one question per message bottom
posting works well.  I often skip the first post then look at the
first reply by a 'famous name' and pick up the thread from there.
I know that "famous name" posters bottom posts and when I read the
message I can see the full chain of information and thought.

When I see a thread of MIXED top and bottom posters I tend to kill
(delete) the entire thread as being too tangled to follow.

Summary: 
This is a public group so take a  point of view that makes it easy for
the third, .... twenty third follow up message to make sense to a
reader with a threaded mail reader.

FWIW: 
I have been reading 'net news' for a long time.  On a 150baud modem I
was a top poster as were we all.  It took too long to read down three
pages through stuff you have already read to see the newest comments.
In this forum bottom posting works because of the type of exchange and
the tools we all have today.  We often added a line that said only old
context was below a dashed line so the context was handy but not in
the way.

A Parallel: 
I have been told that in China the regions of an envelope for the From
and To are inverted from the US custom.  It is apparently not uncommon
for westerners in China to have a letter delivered back to them
because they wrote the to in the from region.  Context matters.
When in Rome do as the Romans do....


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