[pct-l] Lazy Responders

[Gary Wright]

On Jan 30, 2010, at 3:39 PM, Josh wrote:
> I agree...top posting makes the most sense since MOST people erase previous
> posts...so unless UR complete new to a "Thread", top posting (reverse
> chronological order) makes the most sense.

LOL. I'm laughing because your message was a great illustration of
what started this topic ("Lazy Responders").

Your original material was just 10% of the message, none of
which was required to understand your addition to the thread.

Regardless of top or bottom posting, it is just helpful to edit
replies so as to remove the redundant text.  It makes it
easier to follow the discussion and keeps messages from
growing to inordinate sizes in long discussions.

I would contend that long discussions when people are editing
the quoted text are much clearer with consistent "bottom posting".
This is because it is impossible to intersperse quotes and new text
while top posting.  As soon as you do that, you aren't top-posting
anymore or you are creating some weird hybrid message where the
chronological sequence jumps back and forth in no easily discernable
pattern once you get beyond a single reply.

Trivia Having Nothing to do With Good Email Etiquette: If you include
all the cruft that hides under the hood (full headers) that was
used by the Internet mail systems to deliver Josh's message, the
original text added by Josh was just 4% of the entire message! 63%
of the raw data in that message was just the meta-data used to
keep the email flowing.

Radar