Top-posting &c.

[Ulrich Eckhardt]

I that Outlook & Co are guilty. That and the fact that few people even 
think about this. Even today that makes sense, because it provides an 
exact context. Without that, you wouldn't be able to really understand 
what exactly a person is referring to. Also, it helps people to 
structure their thoughts better.

If the above paragraph doesn't make sense to you, see it interleaved 
below for enlightenment. ;)


Am 17.08.2012 07:19, schrieb Dennis Lee Bieber:
> I also tend to blame M$ (Outlook and variants) for this tendency to
> quote everything and top-post -- Outlook makes it almost impossible
> to do a trim&interleave response style.

I that Outlook & Co are guilty. That and the fact that few people even 
think about this.


> 	Including everything as a trailing quote may be okay in an office
> environment, where it serves more as a photocopy included with an paper
> mail response. But anyone "raised" on 2400bps dial-up on a service that
> charged by the minute (GEnie, Compuserve, et al) rapidly learned to use
> as a log-in/pull/log-off/read-reply/log-in/send system, and to remove as
> much $$ quoted text as possible.

Even today that makes sense, because it provides an exact context. 
Without that, you wouldn't be able to really understand what exactly a 
person is referring to. Also, it helps people to structure their 
thoughts better.


I tend to disagree with the bandwidth argument, which is obsolete. To 
me, it's more about communication efficiency and it's only one possible 
way to achieve that.

Uli