[Tutor] [OT] Replies go to individuals, not the list?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On 21/08/13 08:40, Andy McKenzie wrote:

> Well, since someone else brought it up... I really prefer top posting.  In
> general, I don't WANT to reread every message:  I want to quickly get to
> whatever is new.

You shouldn't have to reread every message. At most, you should have to skim a few paragraphs of quoted text to establish context, and then get to the new stuff. Like here. Notice I've trimmed all the extraneous conversation, and got right down to the bit that matters.

Of course, this is a simple case. Sometimes it's harder to trim, and you end up with multiple paragraphs of older text. But even then you don't have to read the whole thing, you should be able to skim it, looking for key words or key sentences that establish context.

Those with reading difficulties (e.g. the blind or partially sighted, those reading in a language they are not fluent in, or simply lousy readers) may have trouble skimming text. I'm sympathetic, but they're not actually worse off than with top-posting. They can just ignore the quoted text, and hope that the response makes sense without context. Just like reading a top-posted message.


[...]
> What REALLY gets to me is the people who try to insist that their way is
> objectively RIGHT, and everyone else is practicing bad habits, or polluting
> the net, or some other nonsense like that.  The fact is, we just have
> different work flow preferences.  You like one thing, I like another.  If
> you want to present your view rationally and objectively, or talk about
> your preferred layouts, that's fine.  But let's not start saying someone
> has "bad habits" because they disagree with you.

I've been getting and sending email long enough, in enough different contexts, that I think I can objectively say: most email users can't write for shit, and posting style doesn't enter into it, they're just poor writers, lazy writers, incompetent writers. On a technical forum like this, you're seeing a better-than-average set of writers.

I think I can also say that for a wide range of situations, top-posting is objectively worse for a number of reasons, but it's not too bad if you have a very small number of emails between just two parties, and it certainly does have an advantage that it clearly puts the response right up top where it is easy to see.

The worst part of top-posting is that the typical email will raise more than one question or point that needs answering, but without context, it's hard to clearly respond when top-posting. You need a chunk of added verbiage:

     You asked a question about map(), the answer is blah blah blah.

     You also asked about the exception that you got. The line of code that
     failed was blah blah blah, and the reason for the exception was blah...

     Also, you mentioned blah blah blah, to which I say, blah...


You simply don't need that extra verbiage when posting interleaved after the question, the question can stand for itself! But since most people are lazy writers, they don't do either. They arbitrarily pick one question (usually the first, or the simplest) and answer it alone.

(I've sent business emails to people where I clearly said "I need the answer to these three questions or we cannot proceed with your project", and enumerate the questions, and they responded to the *last* question and ignored the other two. Lazy *and* stupid, the story of mankind.)

What gets me is the ever-growing cancerous lump of quoted-quoted-quoted-quoted-quoted text that grows at the bottom of top-posted emails. Email volume grow exponentially in size, e.g.:

First email is 5 lines long.
Reply is 5 lines long + 5 quoted lines, = 10 lines.
Reply to that is 5 lines long, + 10 quoted lines = 15 lines.
Reply to that is 5 lines long, + 15 quoted lines = 20 lines.
Reply to that is 5 lines long, + 20 quoted lines = 25 lines.

After five emails, we have a total of 75 lines of text, of which only 25 lines is actual fresh content, a ratio of 33%. The signal-to-noise ratio rapidly diminishes. After ten emails, the ratio is 18%, and after 20, just 9%. That's worse than interleaved posting with trimming, where the ideal is a 1:1 ratio. Real email conversations don't get anywhere near that ideal, but my estimate is that a ratio of 50% or better is easily attainable so long as people trim.

In practice, business email is even worse than this: messages tend to be short, and those stupid and legally meaningless disclaimers at the bottom of emails long. I've seen a TWENTY line disclaimer, quoted FOURTEEN times, in a single email:

   >>>>>>>>>>>>>> This email may contain blah blah blah ...
   >>>>>>>>>>>>> This email may contain blah blah blah ...
   >>>>>>>>>>>> This email may contain blah blah blah ...
   >>>>>>>>>>> This email may contain blah blah blah ...
   >>>>>>>>>> This email may contain blah blah blah ...
   ...

Seriously, I kid you not.

A few years ago, the company I work for took a customer to court for non-payment. During discovery, we had to provide the customer with copies of all emails between us. I estimated the volume of email to be multiple thousands of pages, if printed out in full, and only a couple of dozen if we extracted out the fresh (unquoted) content, trimming legal disclaimers and signatures and quoting. To a first approximation, the signal to noise ratio of business email is approximately zero :-)



-- 
Steven