OT: How do I change to not be a top poster?

The old newsreaders didn't all thread, and even when they did, it was a PITA to figure out what was happening in the conversation... so everyone took a little excerpt from the post they were replying to, and posted beneath that. You always scrolled down to read the new post. It also kept people from quoting too much (waterfalling) and wasting bandwidth. Most, though not all, newsreaders now thread in such a way that it's easy to figure out the history of a conversation at a glance, and it's faster for increasing numbers of people to read posts that have the new text at the top, above the quoted text.

Old-school Usenetters often get pissy about top-posting, because it's "bad netiquette". I top-post because after being annoyed with the inconvenience of reading bottom-posts for about the last four years, I took a poll, found that most of the readers I was talking to prefer top-posts anyway, and changed my preferences to accomodate the new conventoion.

-Kalera

Uh oh. What did I start? :o)

I guess it doesn't matter what everyone else thinks because I bet it's about evenly split. I want to do it because it's a pain for ME to cut and paste the part of the conversation I want to reply to up to the top and still have my signature at the bottom and reply in the middle. ::sigh::

I guess it's not really mattering right now because I haven't figured out how to have a signature anyway!

Ha ha ha. It sure is easier. I'm not feeling in a place to learn a new reader right now...well, not tonight anyway. I've gotten so lazy that I don't want to do a few mouse clicks to get things where I want 'em to be. ::sigh::

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from Kalera Stratton :

]Old-school Usenetters often get pissy about top-posting, because it's ]"bad netiquette".

well, i'm one of those. but then i snip out unrelated stuff. i do a LOT of snipping. top posting has gotten so hard for me to figure out i don't try on a lot of them.

"reply inline"

I actually do enjoy that method a lot, especially in email.

-Kalera

The usual no-win discussion. :o)

Netscape make that easy, too, but I'll bet Outlook does this way as well. Create a text file with your sig material in it and save where you can find it again. Look in your menus, perhaps under "Account Preferences," and look for the function that attaches a signature to each outgoing message. (This is probably in the same place that allows you to mung your email address.) Then all you have to do is put the file name in the box.

Arondelle

...and, it tastes like chicken.......

The Blessed Fiddy, Patroness Saint of the Disorganized LC in Sunny So Cal Personality Development Specialist (Full-Time Mom!)

Hm. I tried that and it looked like gibberish.

Let me go open the netscape one and try it again.

Hee hee hee. That's funny. We gave my 2.5 year old tapioca pudding not so long ago and when I asked him if he liked it he said "it tastes like chicken." Cracked me up then too.

I like it in email (interspersing) when its done in a different font, otherwise I get lost figuring out which of us said what. The other alternative is to treat an email like a hand written snail letter. I will leave the other person's note under my response so if they are having a CRS kind of day and dont know what my email is referring to they can look at their original easily enough. Anything that works, works. :-) Diana

Of all ways to reply, I hate "reply inline" the most.

I think of posts kind of like letters, to be taken whole. That "inline" stuff takes things out of context. And most often (though not usually here) is argumentative and nit-picking. And its one of those forms of writing that get progressively worse.

Have you seen that style of reply in its fourth or fifth stage? It gets to the points where the replies are picked apart again and again, so that the conversation becomes just a squabble and is completely incohesive.

It really goes against the grain, for me, to break things apart instead of take the information and bring it together into a whole that works.

Tina

?? My Outlook lets me post where ever I want.

Tina

"Ar> Netscape is naturally bottom-posting, however, I can post where ever

...top-posting... it's what's for dinner!

-Kalera

ROTFL!

My family likes to say "it tastes like grasshopper" because of a mystifying comment my mother made many years ago. She was telling me that some people ate grasshopper as a staple, and then said, "In fact, your people used to call shrimp the "grasshopper of the sea"".

I do not know WHO she is talking about (the Welsh?) but now everything gets compared to grasshopper. Venison is "grasshopper of the forest".

-Kalera

Yeah, you can post wherever you want but I have to do a lot of cutting and pasting to get it to look like I want. I just wanted to start of under the message so I only have to delete, not move things around. Like I said, I'm lazy. It's probably better not to get things all customized because right when I get it how I want it my computer locks up and I lose all my settings.

Top posting, its not just for breakfast anymore! Diana

You know, I never noticed that before, but youre right, often interspersing on newgroups is used to pull a post apart bit by bit. It gets mighty confusing either way after the first couple posts. In emails it doesnt bother me. In newsgroup threads, especially nasty ones, it does. Diana

And Netscape does it for you? I must be confused.

Tina

Love it!!

Tina

"Kalera Stratt> My family likes to say "it tastes like grasshopper" because of a