File System

[Gordon Messmer]

Christofer C. Bell wrote:
> 
> To be honest, no one really cares if you top post or not, but it only
> takes a moment to ridicule someone over the Internet.  Some folks need
> the self-esteem boost of making fun of a top-poster.

Especially technical types like things to make sense.  Inline replies 
make a lot of sense, since one can reply to individual remarks without 
establishing context in your reply.  It saves a lot of typing.

"bottom-posting" works about as well, as long as you trim the message to 
which you're replying appropriately.

"top-posting" is just ridiculous.  The context of the reply is all below 
the reply itself, which makes it difficult to follow, logically.  A 
reader needs to scroll down, read the original message for context, then 
scroll up to read the reply.  In a mailing list, where subscribers 
probably have the archives to look at, you might as well trim the reply 
out entirely as top-post.

By far the worst, situation, though, is mixing reply styles.  If context 
is *all over the place*, it becomes extremely tedious to scroll around 
and figure out who's replying to what, where.  Since top-posting will 
almost always create this situation, COURTEOUS members discourage it.

Courtesy is the name of the game.  Make it easy for people to help you.