Please could you all Delete part of those LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG letters

Getting messages out of order or not getting them at all has never been a problem for me. So it's a nuisance to have to scroll through many lines of quoted text which I have already seen to get to the message. Those who have missed a previous message aren't left in the dark by top-posting because they can scroll down to see it. It's really not meaningless unless it's a "void-post" with no quoted text.

Thank you JAN ,,,, you grabbed this from my aching fingers ,,, mirjam

I don't do just one thing -- if I am just quoting a tiny bit, I bottom-post, if I am addressing multiple parts of a previous post, I intersperse quoted material and my comments, and if I am quoting a larger segment for reference purposes, I top-post.

But my first online experience was with hobbyist bulletin board systems on a 2400 bps modem, and my habits were formed at that speed, where it takes a LOOOONG time to even download text, so thrifty quoting was the rule of the day, and even on my first Usenet access on someone's Unix box at the same 2400 bps speed, if you quoted more than some percentage, you'd get a warning message saying something to the effect that you are taking up a lot of bandwidth by repeating previous messages, which can be considered rude, and do you really want to do that?

LOL - I'm finding it fascinating how different different newsgroups can be! The other one I asked about it in is strongly of the opinion that top-posting is the work of the devil!

Guess as long as I remember which group is which things will work out just fine. ;-)

nickie

Mirjam Bruck-Cohen wrote:

Actually, in some people's opinion you aren't far from the truth. Outlook Express (Microsoft) is the only email client of which I am aware that doesn't automatically insert the reply below the message, and has no option to change this setting. Ergo, the evil empire at Microsoft has determined top posting is the desired way to reply. The new email client in Vista, Windows Mail, does give you the option of adding a reply at the top or bottom of a message. The logic behind bottom posting is you are replying to a previous message, pages are read from top to bottom, not the other way around. DA

"DA"

I was away for a few days and I got so tired of having to scroll scroll scroll to read a reply of only a few words that I gave up and marked the group as all read. If I have been following a thread, I really don't need to reread each entry every time to keep up. And really, how many posts here are long and complicated? It's basically chatting. With a top post, if you WANT to, you can go back and reread.

Personally, I plan to honor the requests of those who have very valid reasons for preferring top posting.

BB

I totally agree with David & Mirjam. It's ridiculous to post a 2 or 3 word or one sentence reply at the bottom of a huge long post. Edit, edit, edit. I even edit out the extra lines between salutations & names if necessary. And I have been known to top post. (shrug)

Do everyone a favour and clean up your posts! Shelagh

In fact, since the beginning of Usenet, such "me too" posts have been regarded as extremely poor netiquette.

Starting a reply by quoting the previous message(s) is helpful if a reader hasn't already seen them. However, I believe that, more often than not, readers here have already seen them and don't need to read them again. In any case, the real problem is the failure to judiciously trim quoted text which is what Mirjam requested when she started this discussion.

Now, now, no need to be snarky. I was merely adding in my 2 cents worth of support, since I hadn't written about it earlier.

Shelagh

Thank you to all who responded to this request mirjam