[K12OSN] Bottom post

Jay Pfaffman pfaffman at gmail.com
Tue Sep 28 03:26:57 UTC 2004


On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 11:41:33 -0400, Jeff Kinz <jkinz at kinz.org> wrote:

> I'm sorry Jay, Sudev is correct about email posting to a list.

I haven't found a mailing list worth subscribing to for years (though
k12osn is an exception, for now at least).  When I was last an avid
list user (I used to run NCTE-TALK with 600 users and 50 messages/day
on a UUCP link), I'd have agreed wholeheartedly.  I must say that I'm
surprised how much ire the issue raises.

> On Mon, Sep 27, 2004 at 10:45:08AM -0400, Jay Pfaffman wrote:
> > It's not clear that everyone (or even most people) prefers to see
> > reponses below the quoted text.
> 
> If you take a look at all the other email lists hosted by RedHat (Like
> this one is) You will see that bottom posting is the universal
> preference on their lists (as well as most other non-trivial lists)
> (you get your bottom roasted for top posting on some of them!)

I guess I"ve been away from the geeks for too long.  I've heard from
several Normal People that they find this kind of interleaving (which
seems both sensible and polite to me) annoying.  But I may have
forgotten that this list isn't populated by Normal People.

> Bottom posting (interleaving) on email lists is a matter of basic
> courtesy for your fellow list members. Not doing it shows a distinct
> lack of regard for their time, effort and value.

I agree that people's time, effort and value are most important.  I'm
frequently enraged by tech folks who don't take into account the fact
that (for instance) by saving an hour (or week) of their time they
waste a minute or two of 20,000 people's time every single day.  (For
example, see http://learn.occ.utk.edu/~pfaffman/rants/webmail.html.)

> Here's why:
> When posting to an email list you are "conversing" with hundreds of
> other people who are following multiple threads of "conversation"
> simultaneously

Right.

> and therefore cannot follow the thread of your
> conversation unless the dialog is presented in the correct order with
> context.

That's not clear.  As others have pointed out, folks who care about
the thread probably can follow the threat without re-reading stuff.

> Top posting forces the many to hunt up and down in the email to find the
> points being referred to so they can follow the flow of the logic in the
> "conversation".

Not necessarily.  It's often quite possible to top-post and provide an
answer that makes sense on its own.  A response like this, however,
would make no sense either as a top-post or a bottom-post, as too much
of it is conversational.  I think a top-posted response which is
thoughtful enough to stand alone is preferable in many cases and
impossible in others.

> So, your lack of effort is multiplied and transferred to many many other
> people who really shouldn't have to make up for your lack of effort.

Agreed.

> Email is not a real time activity, most people are not following the
> conversation as it is posted.  Many people do the right thing and
> research an issue before they ask about it and read the thread in the
> mail list archives. They need bottom posting.

No, they're reading the archives and it's pretty easy to get the
context from following the thread.  I don't think they're the ones who
we're worried about.  We're worried about the folks who are reading a
large percentage of the messages, not those who "participate" by
reading only 5 or 10.

> > Then it's a drag to have to scroll down
> > through the quoted text, which likely includes lots of stuff not
> > concerning the conversation at hand and a 15 line signature.
> 
> That is not bottom posting. That is stone cold laziness. 

Agreed.

> If you have to
> to scroll past anyone's sig to read a response then don't bother. 

And if someone isn't going to vote for <your choice for president>
they clearly don't have anything useful to say.

> > But all that to say that I've started reading this list using gmail,
> 
> Very few people have gmail, and many won't use it at all due to
> privacy concerns.  

Agreed.

> Indeed, the more technically sophisticated the
> person, the less likely they are to use gmail or any form of web-mail.

I consider myself a more technically sophisticated person.  I've been
using Linux on my desktop since before Redhat was around.  I had to
hack sendmail and listproc to run NCTE-TALK.  I (usually) live in
emacs (the One True Editor).  I abhor attachments.  Don't get me
started on the abomination which is HTML in email.  People use webmail
only because the people who run their mail servers have their own
computers and don't provide a convenient way for people who use
primarly public (lab) computer to have access to their email because
they don't respect their users' time (a concern that we share).
(These same system administrators thing that FTP is an acceptable
substitute for native file sharing.)  Webmail, because it lives in a
web browser, can't be as good as a native application.  I hate
webmail.  Gmail uses Javascript (which I hate in principle because
it's browser specific) to overcome an incredible number of webmail's
shortcomings *and* provides a remarkable number of affordances that I
haven't seen in any mail reader (and, from what I remember of
newsreaders, as NN and trn seem to have gone away).  Unlike
newsreaders gmail keeps previously read articles available in a thread
in a way that's unobtrusive but still accessible.  (I don't trust
gmail enough to actually use it for everything, but it's better than I
remember newsreaders being for reading lists & in some ways better
than my previous system of archiving mail (OK I still keep every
message I send or receive in saved-messages or sent-mail that's
renamed each month to saved-messages-Mon-year, but I've taken to
searching with gmail rather than Pine)).

> > and since it keeps conversations grouped together (the way a good
> > newsreader did in the days before Spammers destroyed USENET) quoted
> > text is largely unneccessary.
> 
> Ahem - USENET is where bottom posting originated.  

Yes.  And, sadly, USENET is dead.  

> You can take a vote if you want. I can tell you exactly how the votes break
> down: Newbies new to technical email lists want top posting. People who
> have been using technical lists a while prefer "bottom posting". The
> core issue is courtesy. (In the form of respect for people's time)

I may be a newbie.  (And that's not sarcastic, I may have been hanging
out with non-technical people too much to know how to properly
participate in a technical list.)

> This issue was discussed passionately many times in the early days of
> the Internet and the final consensus was that bottom posting,
> (Interleaving), had the greatest good for the greatest number.

It's not clear to me that bottom posting and interleaving are the same
thing.  Neither is it clear to me that the answer won't change.  (But
I still agree that frequently arguing the issue is a waste of time.)

> People's time is important. a properly formatted email response
> on an email list includes no extra garbage and does not require anyone
> to scroll down to start reading the response.  

Wait.  If I have someone else's text at the top of my message aren't I
scrolling down to read the message?

> Only enough of the original email should be included to provide the
> context which the response applies to. So called "bottom posting" is
> misnamed.  

Oh.

I think we agree on the important points.

Anyway, if you've read this far and beat my students to the request,
I'll send you a gmail invite.

-- 
Jay Pfaffman                           <pfaffman at utk.edu>
Asst Professor of Instructional Technology, U. TN, Knoxville
Experimenting with gmail, please honor the Reply-To




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