Top or bottom?

[undyingking]

I just had a brief email exchange with someone about the merits (or otherwise) of top-posting. The difference of opinion was such that I thought maybe I was going mad it would be a good idea to do a quick vox pop among you lot. So here goes!

[Poll #1085629]

Comments

[almostalady.livejournal.com]

I've only ever done it that way - I didn't know it was so controversial!

*shame*

;)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I was expecting this survey would demonstrate that it wasn't really any more, but maybe not... not that my flist are probably very representative of the interweb in general ;-)

I didn't know it was so controversial!

[wimble.livejournal.com]

If you/I/they don't top post, but intersperse their comments in the body of the email, then, after a few exchanges, a brand new reader can still read the dialogue. Or, at that point, mutliple dialogues, as the points in the original email get separated by the replies.

Actually, very similar to the way that LJ nests comment replies :)

If, on the other hand, you top post, new readers get the very strang effect of having to go down to the bottom of the email, and reading the first email (reading down the page), and then winding backward to find the first reply (which they then read forward again). Rinse and repeat, until you're dizzy.

[davefish.livejournal.com]

What that gentleman said.

Unfortunately with work we use Lotus Notes which is horrid in that respect, and makes a big mess of everything.

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

One can fix Notes to work the "right" way, but it takes some fiddling with templates etc etc (and it probably helps if you're the one running the server)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I think most mail client software is these days. As soon as the cursor by default appears at the top instead of at the bottom, your average user isn't gong to move it.

which is horrid in that respect

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Ah, now I see what you're doing!

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

Herald webmail is special. It puts the cursor at the top when replying, but at the bottom below the sig when composing a new message.

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

Actually I'm wrong. It's bottom every time, but below the sig. I'm so used to pressing page up when emailing that I'd forgotten it put the cursor at the bottom!

[chrisvenus]

Blimey. I actually think that that's a horrible way of maintaining long discussion. I think things should be read in chronological order because that's how it was written. When replying if you have branching of conversation happen your way only really works if the branches all remain independant. If they don't then the first branch can be referring to something at the end of the first mail but you haven't got that far because you are wading through a million replies.

Also in long e-mail exchanges having a couple of lines of new text interspersed in ten times that of quoted text surely sucks. And the only way to get around that is to delete some of the quoted text (which defeats the object of giving context to brand new readers) or to put all your text together in a single easy to find place. Might I suggest the top of the e-mail where a reader will first be looking when opening the mail?

Personally I think there is space for both. If replying to specific bits of mail then I will intersperse to make it more obvious what I'm referring to. If I want to have conversation available for reference then I'll top post.

Or I'll quite often just follow the style of other replies if the above doesn't particularly apply.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

That's the thing really, if everyone else has top-posted then your bottom-posted contribution may well evade the careless eye...

follow the style of other replies

[chrisvenus]

Well, I can imagine that even if people are bottom posting all the way then if you are looking at comments in the 20th reply to an e-mail may get lost as well.

And this has just made me thing about the huge mess of

> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > quoting indentations that the mid posted mails will have if you try to keep a full conversation history...

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

If the discussion is long, you often don't want to recap from the start, you just want to see what is the latest problem, and top-posting helps with that.

Of course email threads are never complete, as people often don't close off loose ends, as they would if revising a document.

Branching emails are almost impossible to follow. Another pet hate is people changing the cc list so you don't know whether a third party has done a task.

Writing good email dicussions is every bit as much an art as having a good conversation or hosting a good meeting.

[chrisvenus]

Another pet hate is people changing the cc list so you don't know whether a third party has done a task

that sounds like a problem with your task management system rather than the e-mailing stuff. :)

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Its a problem with my colleagues, who I'll only have to endure for 6 more weeks ....

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

I had no idea what you were on about, until I read comments to figure it out. Surely it's entirely dependent on the nature of the communication. Addressing a lot of points, you're better to intersperse responses in the original. Responding to a single comment is fine at the top. And since email is a conversation, they already know what they wrote to you.

It's only (a bit) broken where you're listening in on other peoples' conversation (eg in a mailing list) and the emails in the conversation arrive in your inbox out of sequence. There is a certain comedy value in being copied in on a conversation half-way through, where the earlier parts were not intended for wider consumption.

And it's not Microsoft's fault. I do it, and I've only used Eudora or Mac Mail for my email needs...

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

Aha! Now I get what Mo's talking about!

Answer: top-post and use googlemail :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I bet they got the idea off Microsoft.

I've only used Eudora or Mac Mail for my email needs

[wimble.livejournal.com]

I bet they got the idea off Microsoft.

I've only used Eudora or Mac Mail for my email needs

They did: outlook express left the cursor at the top, and then other mail clients changed their default behaviour to match the users' expectations.

[sesquipedality.livejournal.com]

I will top post if the purpose of quoting is merely to offer context to the message, and I'm not refering directly to the quoted text.

This seems sensible to me, since it's 'additional information' which is not as important as the message itself.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

That's what I do too.

I will top post if the purpose of quoting is merely to offer context to the message, and I'm not refering directly to the quoted text.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

While we're at it, can we put people who send HTML mails against the wall, too?

[wimble.livejournal.com]

If we set a width=1px; style, we can probably put them against both walls at the same time.

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

I send HTML mails when there's no easy alternative. It's good for sending (for example) embedded excel tables, or in-line linked pictures when you do want the picture as part of the message, but don't want to embed it and send it out as a binary attachment.

While we're at it, can we put people who send HTML mails against the wall, too?

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

If the embedding of images, tables etc. were to work perfectly across platforms/email applications, that would be indeed a reason to use them. I have yet to receive one that has perfect code, though.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I suspect "HTML email" is a fairly ad hoc concept which different mail client manufacturers interpret as they see fit. Certainly none of the ones I've used generate code that's even approximately compliant with the ordinary HTML specs.

[chrisvenus]

Why? Do you not like bold text or underlining or other such rich text features in your mail?

Or did you mean people who send badly former HTML with a bunch of crap in it?

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Because HTML mails usually force me to top post. ;o)

That is also an issue.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

I top post as that's the way it works in Gmail, which hides quoted text well. There may be better ways to lay out mail, but you'll never get most people to use them, as they'd always include the whole message rather than extract a few key context lines.

One of the reasons I'm leaving my job is that I can't persuade people that email is a lousy documentation system, and that anything interesting should be added to the wiki I've lovingly set up, and then just links posted to the wiki pages, and comments applied there. This is harder work short term, so they forgo the long term benefits, and as I forgo them.

We also have attachmentitis here, including people who attach 1Mb files which turn out to be a text page advertising a talk, send to 2000 users inboxes. Even my boss, who dutifully wrote minutes in the wiki, has reverted to attaching them as word documents. He couldn't see why this was crap, so I just egoscan them and delete, not my problem.

[jvvw.livejournal.com]

I've lost count of the number of times I've replied to e-mails with a 'Would you mind putting that on the wiki?' :-)

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

I never top post.

> I just had a brief email exchange with someone about the
> merits (or otherwise) of top-posting. The difference of
> opinion was such that I thought maybe I was going mad
> it would be a good idea to do a quick vox pop among you
> lot. So here goes!
>
> Poll #1085629 Top of the pops
> Open to: All, results viewable to: All
>
> So, top-posting: evil or what?
> View Answers
>
> Of course it's evil. People who do it deserve a stern
> talking-to.
> 6 (37.5%)
>
> Get with it daddy-o, the age of the dinosaurs is over.
> Top-posting is here to stay.
> 5 (31.2%)
>
> Top what? Is that like Top Trumps? What on earth are
> you talking about?
> 5 (31.2%)
>
> Chill out, we're all big enough to accommodate a fun
> array of different posting styles.
> 3 (18.8%)
>
> I top-post myself, and I resent the suggestion that
> there's anything wrong with it.
> 3 (18.8%)
>
> I hadn't really thought about it, but now you say so,
> I guess yes it is pretty evil.
> 0 (0.0%)
>
> It's all Microsoft's fault you know.
> 7 (43.8%)
>
> Other (in a comment)
> 4 (25.0%)

And I also trim excess crap that is no longer pertinent to the exchange.

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

I don't get what the big deal is. Seems to me that the argument is whether you waste time delving to the bottom of the email to get the chronological progression and the overview, or whether you waste time reading the threaded and indented responses and then mentally assembling all of them into the broader picture. Neither will stop you from getting simultaneous divergent threads, or stop people from missing important points in previous mails. And you can edit either format to make it more readable - that just means that both formats are potentially lossy. A better question might be "is it evil to edit long emails and/or prune distribution lists?".

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Maybe some thoughtful person will post such a question soon in their journal.

A better question might be

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

Top posting is utterly, utterly evil.

However, I do it when having a conversation with a group of people who insist on doing it themselves. That generally means most of my non-techy friends - they have no idea it's bad and wrong, so they just do the quickest thing and stick their comment in at the top, leaving the entire thread underneath it. In that situation, if I reply properly it seems to fry their tiny minds, so I follow a kind of 'when in Rome' policy, as I'm the only one who cares.

On a mailing list, however, I never, ever top post, even when most other people are doing so. No matter how many times the mods ask people to trim their quotes, there will always be plenty who don't, but still, I'll do things properly for the sake of the right-minded.

[jvvw.livejournal.com]

I think there's possibly a difference between an e-mail exchange where you know everybody is reading everything chronologically (because for instance they form the other half of the conversation!) and a large mailing list exchange where somebody might want to jump in at the end, although I don't really engage in the latter. Is it really possible to follow such a discussion without reading at least the majority of the posts though?

Outlook shows you the top of the message and it's really annoying to have to scroll down to see the new content, as a result when I use Outlook for work, it actually really annoys me if people don't top-post. Gmail removes quotes so it's all a bit irrelevant there.

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

It's a work of evil, but sadly unavoidable these days. Bottom posting only works if it's easy to make it clear which bit of the post is the original mail, and which bits are the reply.

Outlook has made this increasingly tricky until the only way to do it these days is to have "my points in a a tasteful shade of purple" at the top of the mail, and then manually colour all your points to the appropriate shade.

Yet another reason to give any Microsoft programmers you know a hard biff in the snooter.

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

I top post at work because nobody scrolls down emails.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

I do. People I deal with do. Because I refuse to top-post ;-)

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

I routinely top post, and generally encourage it. I find the practice of replying to something sentence by sentence absolutley inimical to decent discussion. Rather than attempting to address what someone has said by understanding the whole and then responding to their point in a coherent manner you end up getting into tit for tat exchanges around individual sentences, words and eventually commas.

If I want to read a dialogue I'd much sooner read it as a series of discrete emails; which is how it happened. If a bunch of people want to edit their way to a collective position they can try a wiki instead.

The only exception is where someone has asked me a set of questions and it makes sense to reply to each one inline. Otherwise I find 'mid posting' or whatever we should call it rather annoying.