Re: OT: Safe Riddles

From: Parse Tree (account_at_domain.extension)
Date: 01/07/05 

Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2005 03:02:39 GMT

Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> In article <zP1Dd.252385$O24.43690@news.easynews.com>,
> account@domain.extension (Parse Tree) writes:
>
>
>>Ed Murphy wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 18:06:32 -0600, Rhyanon wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Top posting rocks; one can conveniently folow up a reply, at least
>>>>for someone actually has the mental acumen to keep track of what's
>>>>being said.
>>>
>>>Convenient != appropriate.
>>
>>You need to justify bottom posting with something. If all other things
>>are equal, and top posting is more convenient, then it is necessarily
>>more appropriate.
>
> More convenient for whom? The original poster, who is too lazy to
> scroll to the bottom of the quoted material because his newsreader
> is too broken to put the cursor there by default?

I agree that it is more convenient for the original poster.

If the cursor is put there by default, then why bother having the quoted
material above in the first place?

> Or the thousands
> of potential readers,

The participants are the first concern. Then the actual readers and then
the potential readers.

Regardless, people wanting to read a thread would read the thread, not a
single post. The quoted material is there just in case.

> each of whom must scroll back and forth to
> make sense of a thread which is effectively written umop-apisdn?

No. In the majority of cases you'd just have to scroll up. In the few
cases when there is more than a page of info from a single respondant
then you'd have to scroll down and then up. Fortunately, that rarely
happens, and is a good signal that people should be snipping.

>>>>Easier to top post without scrolling through five hundred lines of
>>>>rehash.
>
> That answers my question. Thanks.

You're welcome.

>>>Failure to trim quoted material is the real problem, and bottom
>>>posting is not much better than top posting (especially when
>>>combined with failure to trim).
>
> Especially when the reply is a single "me too" line. If all you're
> going to do is express agreement, liberal snipping (or even a one-line
> summary of the quoted text) is quite enough for you to follow up to.

Lack of snipping is a problem with both top and bottom posting. However,
bottom posting makes it easier to snip, because you can snip everything
that is exactly a certain post count back by simply deleting everything
that apppears after a certain point. Bottom post snipping is slightly
more tedious.

> And note that phrase "follow up". That implies that your reply should
> follow the quoted text, not precede it.

No. The use of the word follow is in reference to it following it time,
not coming after it in space.

It is a follow up because it is a response that happens after the
initial post, not because it is spatially located lower on a page or
whatnot.

> Unless you normally read the
> last chapter of a book, then the previous one, until you reach the
> start.

Carrying the book analogy further, then everyone would have to read the
quoted material because you shouldn't really be reading the middle of
the novel without reading the chapters before it.

This is clearly a false analogy. You are not reading the thread. You are
not reading the quoted material unless you forgot what has been
previously posted.

>>it is easier to trim quoted material with top posting over that of
>>bottom posting. That's another advantage it has.
>
> Only if, as I mentioned above, your newsreader is broken.
> (Microsoft products fit the description "broken as designed".)

No, it's easier to trim regardless. With top posting it is arranged as
such. I'll use } as the quoted character, because I don't want to mess
up people reading it with the >'s and whatnot.

John:
} Jill:
} } Betty:
} } } John:
} } } } Betty:
} } } } } I am a bitch.
} } } } This is some stuff.
} } } Here is some more stuff.
} } Etc.
} Post!

And here is my response. Now to trim the responses that happened over
two messages ago, you have to go into the main body and match the
indenting and whatnot. This is especially problematic when people have
newsreaders that break the quoting (either by a crappy newsreader,
crappy settings or whatever).

Now with top posting.

John:
} Post!
} Jill:
} } Etc.
} } Betty:
} } } Here is some more stuff.
} } } John:
} } } } This is some stuff.
} } } } Betty:
} } } } } I am a bitch.

You just have to go to Betty and trim everything that happens after her.
It doesn't matter if someone has their reader to respond with very short
lines because it will still be quite clear who said what.

>>With top posting, it get's muddied trying to look through the
>>attributions so that there is only a certain depth of quoted
>>material. With top posting, the attribution is directly above
>>the material quoted from that message, so it's very easy to trim.
>
> So interleave your attributions.

Is there a reader that actually does that automatically?

> Or trim things so that there
> aren't so many levels of quoted material.

Why exert yourself when top posting solves these problems more easily?

> There's seldom any
> reason to quote more than three or four levels deep. Again,
> it all comes back to laziness on the part of the poster,

The poster is always going to be lazy. You can go right ahead on that.
Personally, I think it's far easier to get them to do something that
requires even less effort than they're currently exerting.

> whose
> minuscule time saving is consumed many times over by readers of
> his message, each of which has to go through various gyrations
> to sort out the sequence of the various quotes.

So if you read a paragraph somewhere on a page, you have a great deal of
difficulty moving your eyes upward to read the paragraph above it?
Reading the quoted material in a top posted manner is not difficult or
time consuming.

>>>Interleaving replies amongst trimmed material is
>>>appropriate.
>>
>>It is only appropriate because most posters (myself included) are
>>lazy, and prefer interleaving to creating multiple posts in response.
>
> Multiple posts aren't necessary. You just address each point in turn.
> The flow of the thread is left undisturbed.

The thread is never disturbed because we're talking about a single
message within the thread, and not the thread itself.

However, addressing each point in turn leads to a lot of redundancy and
whatnot.

> I take my philosophy from the same Lewis Carroll passage I used to
> use as a rebuttal to the Structured Programming zealots who wanted
> to chop programs up into little subroutines jumping all over core:
>
> The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. "Where shall I begin,
> please your Majesty?" he asked.
>
> "Begin at the beginning, the King said, gravely, "and go on
> till you come to the end: then stop."
>
> That sounds like a heck of a good way to write something;
> it's certainly the natural way to read it.

You don't write all the quoted material. Your write the original
content. And the original content is all read from start to finish in
the thread. So what are you going on about?

> --
> /~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
> \ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
> X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
> / \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

Speaking of tradition, I believe the standard format for a sig is two
-'s followed by a space.