Re: Top post vs. bottom post (was: Re: [CFT] libtool on nix->cygwin cross, with wine)

[Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin at cygwin dot com>]

On Feb 25 09:24, Danilo Turina wrote:
> Ben Kamen wrote:
>> Greg Freemyer wrote:
>>> On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 4:35 PM, rhubbell <Rhubbell@ihubbell.com> wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:15:33 -0500
>>>> Greg Chicares wrote:
>>>>> By the way, this list discourages full quoting:
>>>>>   http://www.cygwin.com/acronyms/#TOFU
>>>> Ok, this is one neurotic list.
>>>[...]
> I just find it more natural than bottom posting, for the reason that if  
> I'm following a thread post by post, I don't want to re-read every time  
> all the things that have been said, instead I only care about the last  
> thing said.

Which is exactly the reason why full quoting is not the way to go, either.
That's what bugs me all the time.  Why are people not willing or capable
of removing all the stuff from a text which doesn't add anything to the
discussion anymore?

And that's worse with top posting.  I'm often getting exactly this TOFU
style messages because they are used in the sales world.  What you call
the "last thing said" is something along the lines of

  Corinna,

  can you help this guy?

And that's it.  NO information at all.  To find out what's going on I
have to scroll through lots of text until I finally find the original
request of "this guy".  And that request it not necessarily the first or
last reply of "this guy" within that worm-style mail in which nobody
ever removed any non-important information.  What is the advantage of
that mailing style, please?  I don't see it.  It just hurts.

> I top posted in one of the Cygwin lists, I have been said that it was  
> wrong there, I explained my reasons and told that I didn't want to  
> scroll till the end of the e-mail each time [...]

Again, that's the other bad style.  Full quoting just hurts as well,
same as top posting.  Sometimes it is not easy to filter out the
important part of a previous posting but that's no reason at least
to *try*.


Corinna