In message <[log in to unmask]>, Ted Ashton
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>Thus it was written in the epistle of Brad Feazell,

[snip]

>> Another thing that would make reading this list more convenient would be the
>> uniform placement of responses at the top of the original. There are
>> appropriate times to combine the response with the original but placing the
>> entire response at the bottom is unorthodox in 2001, isn't it?
>
>No, Sir.  No more unorthodox than placing the entire response at the top is.
>
>>It's just  much quicker to read it from the top no matter if you're
>>using a mail client  or a news reader.
>
>A single keystroke suffices to put me at the bottom and placing the
>response there allows a single message to be archived or forwarded
>containing the conversation in an order which is comfortable to read.
>By far more useful in my estimation.
>
I would like to very much agree with, and to amplify what Ted has to say
above.

And I'm saying it here because that keeps things in chronological order
of writing, the only way you can possibly follow an ongoing dialog with
more than two contributors.

Posting your answer at the top has three problems:

(i) it does not encourage you to remove the original below it (happens a
lot in HP3000-L; etiquette says your contribution should exceed what you
quote, and yet we get three-page postings of multiple past messages
following a single top-added line) :-(

(ii) You cannot respond point by point, as Ted has done above. Such a
response preserves context, saves you having to requote text, and so
saves bandwidth

which Brad indeed acknowledges for *some* messages. But others may wish
to contribute that way, when someone else has already top-inserted -
such message stake ages to unravel.

And further:

(iii) if such top-inserted postings make little or no attempt to build
on or reference what has gone before, then this can seem discourteous.
Sometimes it *is* discourteous.


So, if you take an existing posting, just whack your thoughts on the
top, and post the whole kit and caboodle again, you save a minuscule
amount of time for yourself. But you cost it to others, over and over
and over.
Clue: we don't all have always-on T2, or whatever.

If your message has no direct relevance to a specific thing that has
already been said, delete it all, then your text is at the top anyway.

If it has some relevance, place it after the original text it is
relevant to.

And delete the text you aren't replying to. Put [snip] to mark this, if
you are afraid of distorting the original posting. But remember, the
original is always available to subscribers to refer back to.

Snip is your friend - and friend to all of us. And snip requires
traversing the original message, to the bottom. So why not post as you
go down to the bottom, and if nothing is directly relevant, post your
new contribution when you get there?
--
Roy Brown        'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
Kelmscott Ltd     useful, or believe to be beautiful'  William Morris

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