[K12OSN] Bottom post

[Jay Pfaffman]

It's not clear that everyone (or even most people) prefers to see
reponses below the quoted text.  Often people are actually following
the conversation and don't need to see the quoted text (since they
just read the other message).  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.

But all that to say that I've started reading this list using gmail,
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.


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


On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 11:34:11 +0530, Sudev Barar <sudev at mantraonline.com> wrote:
> This great page http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
> which teaches newbies how to reply/quote properly on the Usenet -
> applies to lists as well.
> 
> Especially http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote2.html#ss2.3
> which explains very well why one should bottom post: quote:
> [...]
> 2.3 Why should I place my response below the quoted text?
> 
> Usually, the reading-flow is from left to right and from top to bottom,
> and people expect a chronological sequence similar to this. Especially
> people who are reading a lot of articles (and who therefore would
> qualify as the ideal person to answer your question) appreciate it if
> they can read at first the text to which you are referring. The quoted
> text is some kind of help to remember the topic, which of course will
> not work, if you place the quoted text below your response.
> Furthermore, that's the standard. This may sound as a weak argument, but
> since people are not used to reading the other way around, they have no
> idea what you are referring to and have to go back and forth between the
> referenced articles, have to jump between different articles and so on.
> In short - reading the article becomes more and more difficult - for
> people who read many articles it is reason enough to skip the entire
> article, if the context is not obvious.
> And besides: doesn't it look stupid to first get the answer and then see
> the question? (Aside from Jeopardy, of course.)
> [...]
> 
> HTH
> --
> Sudev Barar
> Learning Linux
> 
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> 
> 



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