[Python-Dev] Top-posting on this list

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Ben Finney writes:
 > "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> writes:
 > 
 > > Trimming can be a PITA if you're using a crummy MUA
 > 
 > How so? It merely requires the ability to navigate up and down by lines,
 > and to select and delete text. I've used some very crummy MUAs, but the
 > ability to trim quoted text has never been absent or difficult.

Not difficult, time-consuming.  It can take many seconds to scroll to
bottom in a 200-line quote with gmail and the webmail system used by
the University of California at Santa Cruz.  You bet I get down on my
knees and give thanks that my other MUA is an Emacs every time I have
to use webmail.

Please note that I'm not defending the practice of top-posting; I'm
trying to understand why anybody would do it, and address the
readability issue in that context.  A sentinel that says "the next 500
lines are whatever happened to be in the tail of the 16KiB block on
the file system" does help.

If others are willing to play bad cop, as Aahz did, I'd be very happy
to accept the benefit of a cleaned-up list.  But I'm not willing to do
it myself.