Talk:Posting style/Archive 1

Thunderbird / trimming[edit]

Just an anecdote:

I just had to show a user how to set up Thunderbird to top-posting by default because she said that when she bottom-posted her correspondents (non-technical people all) would not even scroll down to the bottom of the message before replying with "You didn't send me any message- all got was the quote" or some such.

That's usually a sign that the writer didn't trim sufficiently. Unfortunately, Thunderbird, when set to bottom-post, doesn't really encourage trimming, as the cursor just starts out at the bottom ready to type a response. Many think the ideal is for a mail program to start the cursor at the top so you can move down through the quoted material to trim and to reply inline, but unfortunately this encourages the ignorant to top-post. *Dan* 17:24, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

NPOV tag[edit]

I'm considering adding a {{npov}} tag to the article. The discussion of the use of the top-posting method in the beginning as rude is worded as a point-of-view, not in encyclopedic phrasing. I'll probably first try to find a different wording- Bevo 22:19, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Speeding up reading[edit]

Modern mail/news agents are powerful enough to sort messages chronologically within thread, and to cache even previously-read messages. To follow the flow of a thread, all the viewer need do is select the thread and then chain forward or backward.

Inline replies should be used whenever there is MORE than one block of new text. But if there is ONLY one block of new text, why keep on using procedures that are less convenient these days?

When an only block of NEW text is placed at the top, it is seen as soon as the message is accessed. Keep the referred-to material at the bottom - those who wish to read it can scroll down; while those who want to read THIS message without any delay whatsoever will be saved scrolling. --Mikus Grinbergs <mikus@bga.com> 21:55, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry. That entire thing parsed as nonsense. Please try again. --Ihope127 21:24, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Support for bottom posting in some software[edit]

Some news readers and mail programs will help the user to read bottom quoted messages by highlighting the different parts in different colours. Different colours are used for different levels of quoting. There are also options to automatically collapse quoted sections to show just their first line. This makes reading bottom quoted messages even easier.

193.128.224.45 14:58, 20 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Readability[edit]

I think that the emphasis should be on readability. What is the information you want the reader to grok? Is the information order-specific: "Ok, considering ___ and ___ I want the reader to understand ___". In which case the writer probably wants to trim and post below.

A lot of emails are context specific, they rely on the reader to remember that email thread from 18 minutes ago - and I think a good style guide would encourage people to use trim-posting to stop this. The reader is busy. They're away from their desk at the moment. Their mind is distracted elsewhere... the point of trim-posting is not to trim post, it's to make the message complete and self-defining.

This is what Whatsername does with Harry Potter books, each book is complete and while it has an ordered place in a larger story, you can get all the information you need to understand the plot of book 3 without having read or remembered books one and two.

It's also important to retain enough information so that 8 months down the track the content of the email remains a valid historical record of the communication.

I think there should also be an example of a perfectly valid top post:

Hi guys,

My friend sent me this email the other day and I think it makes good sense.
I'm worried about the implications it might have. 
What do you think? What should I say to her?

Brent

> Brent,
>
> Example email here with a bunch of talk about that thing.
> 
> Cheers,
>
> Brent's friend.

and an example of a perfectly valid bottom post - i can't be bothered finding/sourcing one right now... but I'm thinking of an email to an international supplier on a change to a big order or something... where you want to preserve the other party's communication holus bolus and maintain as much of the original party's content as you can.

Brentstrahan 03:34, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The above example seems to be a case of forwarding rather than replying, and, while there are some similarities in formatting between the two, there are also differences because of the different purpose; in the case of forwarded messages, it often makes perfect sense to top-post because your comments are intended to introduce the forwarded message (which the recipients probably haven't seen yet) rather than to respond to it. *Dan T.* 15:01, 28 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

POV[edit]

In my opinion, this posting is insufficiently POV. It tries so hard to be NPOV that it fails to clearly characterise the points being made by either side, in consequence of which it does not actually make it clear why the article exists at all.

I suspect part of the answer is to move the article to 'Email quoting style' and redirect Top_posting and Bottom_posting to there, and then clarify the arguments of each side.

In my opinion, that would make it clear how weak most of the arguments in favor of top posting are, but that's just me. :-)
--Baylink 18:25, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a section which lists the points usually made when this issue is debated on Usenet. I think it is useful to have such things detailed in one place, rather than hinted at throughout the rest of the article. (It may even be useful to move them nearer the introduction (?)) However, I have to admit I find it hard to recall many pro-top-posting views (perhaps because I generally use the interleaved method myself?) and so the pro-TP side of the argument is a little weak. The 'not wanting to scroll down' argument is the only one I can recall ever being made by TP advocates. JavaKid 10:45, 30 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I fail to see anything POV in the article as it stands today, nor is there any rationale for the NPOV tag provided on this Talk page. Accordingly, I am removing the NPOV tag. --Splitpeasoup 02:58, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the section entitled "Usage" makes completely unsupported assertions (hiding behind the word seems) that objectors to top-posting come from the old days of Usenet and are "vehement". There is NO DATA quoted in the article to support this. The article should be trimmed to describe simply the three common-styles and the arguments pro/con. All the rest is opinion and until it's supported it has no place being treated as fact. Jumble 14:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just stumbled upon this page as well, and was amzed how biased it was towards Top-Posting. The Top-Posting section is 4 or 5 times the length of the Bottom-Posting section, and is written as to forward Top-Posting as the "standard". I notice also that the list of references at the bottom includes a link to Dan's Mail Format Site for Top Posting, but not to his equally good site on Bottom Posting. So much for non-biased content. It also completely ignores the fact that Dan's site supports Bottom-Posting as the standard we should be following.

funny thing[edit]

I will add to the religious fire that is "fill in the blank" posting. each has a time and place, newsgroups - bottom-posting or trimming. workplace - top-posting. without it being lenghty this is keeping linux off of the desktop. I use Suse9.3 in a MS network, but my email client Evolution forces me to bottom-post, normally not an issue, but when you look like an idiot cause you are the only one out of line with EVERYONE in ALL of the companies I have worked for top-posting, shouldn't etiquette meet todays majority. I am considering reformatting my machine and putting on Windows so I can communicate properly with everyone at work, all my emails bung up the message flow. Now I'm not even trying to take sides, but I just want options, If I bottom post at an org that uses top-posting, i'll never get anything across, the message flow is messed up and i'll just confuse everybody. if i go for trimming, i have to go through 10+ emails picking out choice lines, etc, sending a short email has now become too much work (i'm not lazy, just very busy, 5 minutes to send an email means no email from me, i've got better things to do). if i got to top-post than, bang, the answer is immediately there, all history is included below if you want to see it, but most people in the reply have that info already and it's just a reminder of info, click send and i'm done in 20-30 seconds, time is precious. In newsgroups, reverse the above, bottom-posting gives you the question followed by the answer, great, fantastic, but not what i want at a business (i don't care to read the question 50 times that the email goes back and forth, i save the delete key for such repititive reading, i want the answer i already know the question, giving me the question 50 times isn't necessary, i have a fabulous tool called a mind and already remember the question, don't tell me it again. Also, i do see the link to the RFC, and i dare any reader of this to step outside and ask the first passerby even what an RFC is. these are technical standards, they are not standards for etiquette even if they claim to be, if they were, people would have actually heard about it. 99.99999% of people are not going to read a small item about netiquette (god i hate buzzwords) in a tiny link in the middle of a bunch of engineers notes, let alone let an engineer dictate what practical etiquette would be. if you are all about proper etiquette than off the top of your head where does the salad fork go?

I, for one, bottom/interleaved post, with judicious trimming, everywhere... at home, at work, in private mail, in newsgroups/mailing lists. Generally, I trim out everything but the important parts of the most recent message I'm replying to; it's rare that there's any need to quote back any of the earlier parts of a long thread. People who don't trim end up with messages dragging a huge stinking load of crap off their bottoms, including lots of signature blocks, disclaimers, ads, list footers, or whatever else is added by the clients/servers the thread has passed through. *Dan T.* 22:50, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

99.99999% of people are not going to read a small item about netiquette

So you mean to tell me that no more than 700 people on Earth read the mentioned RFC?

You must be joking right?

89.181.93.108 (talk)

anonymous me again - Personally I wish this etiquette thing had been extended as far as the users of the internet and not just the geek/engineer crowd. I'm fine with bottom posting and inline, but it's also nice to keep up with the current established message flow, if people disagree than i get emails where i scroll up to the top, then to the bottom, rinse repeat until the final answer is somewhere in the middle, ah yes, that is practical. I asked everyone I met after work yesterday about what they thought was proper etiquette in replies (not newsgroups) and everyone said put your reply on the top and no one had heard of an RFC. logically and personally, bottom-posting and inline make an easier read, but 95% of the world top posts and if someone jumps into the conversation and breaks that order, than communication begins to degrade without a lot of trimming. in the end, my pointless is this - can't we all just get along -either pointy haired bosses will have to learn netiquette and RFC's (ha ha) or engineers will need to get communication skills on how to use various items, but i think both are like matter and anti-matter coming together. me, i guess i'll just live with it and trim and bottom-post, still makes me the odd man out in 2000 people. but in the long run i find the linux mail clients generally behave according to the RFC, but i do see this as a problem for wide spread acceptance among the user class - they will complain, they will be ignored, but they will complain and then just not use it.

I'm sure the majority will unthinkingly go with whatever Outlook Express does as its default - and will be perfectly happy in doing so. Perhaps the solution (if one is indeed needed) is to lobby MS/Google to change their mail clients to be bottom-posting by default (or at least support an option to switch it that way, in the case of GMail)? After all, it's not as if your workmates are active supporters of top posting, they are merely slavishly following a style that OE/Gmail etc. have dictated to them.

I think if someone was to spark a good honest debate about the matter, perhaps in a forum (magazine?) which cuts across both technical and non-technical users, then the merits and power of bottom posting might be better understood, and the client vendors might more readily support it? JavaKid 12:03, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly, there's much that the vendors can do to make their software more friendly to proper bottom/interleaved posting instead of totally hostile to it like Outhouse / Outhouse Excess currently are. However, simply making the cursor start at the bottom (as Thunderbird / SeaMonkey currently do) is not a fully satisfactory solution either; it encourages pure bottom posting without any trimming, the sort of thing that gives bottom posting a bad name and makes pro-top-posters whine a lot in forums about how they have to scroll way down to read the response. Many seasoned trim-posters actually prefer mail clients to start the cursor at the top (as Pegasus Mail does) so they can begin trimming there. Of course, the signature block belongs at the very bottom, and the mail client shouldn't put in blank lines at the top to invite a top-posted reply. Unfortunately, the top-positioned cursor would still end up "encouraging" top-posting among novices. There's really no way for software to "force", or even encourage, good posting style; it seems to be an acquired taste which must be learned. *Dan T.* 12:55, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

mmmm, me thinks some kind of change in the prompt our interface in reply emails is needed here. rules and etiquette are not going to be read by the majority (the majority have no idea where to find these things or that they even exist, having an RFC on etiquette for newbies is like the demolition notice posting for Arthur's house in HHGTTG), so if a standard is to be met it has to come out and be apparent at the time the email is being written. off the top of my head putting something like "^" or any character before each line, these lines will be auto-trimmed unless you delete the character yourself, seems odd at first, but people who take the default will be sending clean replies and those who really want to include lines have to manually delete that character and deleting one character is not too difficult. i think that would enourage good emails.

Ergonomics[edit]

Has anyone researched the ergonomics of top-posting vs. inline posting? That is, how the various posting styles affect an e-mail author's ability to generate better content?

In my cursory online search for supporting evidence, I've read several Web pages, FAQs, etc., which denounce top-posting and promote inline posting. However, the central argument in every one of these pages is that top-posting is bad because it annoys the author of the page by making previously-written threads harder for the next reader to read. This comes dangerously close to making the entire argument one of personal taste, arbitrary tradition, etc., and thus is unconvincing to someone who is not personally annoyed by top-posting. A better argument would result from objective research which finds top-posting inferior as a way for people to communicate.

In my reading of various discussion groups and message authors, some who top-post and some who inline-post, I've noticed a distinct tendency for habitual top-posters to be less capable of replying coherently to what the previous author(s) wrote. Instead, top-posters tend to reply to what they think the previous author(s) wrote, in all but the most superficial discussions. The effect is similar to the party game in which someone whispers a short story into the ear of the next person seated at the table, who in turn whispers it to the next person, and so on, and when the last person repeats the story out loud, it has become something completely different.

I have yet to find an advocate of inline posting who makes it clear that top-posting not only degrades the presentation of thread content, it also tends to degrade the thread content itself, by preventing posters from understanding what they are replying to. In other words, if top-posting is the norm in an online discussion group, the group is unlikely to handle a complex discussion as well as a group of inline posters, especially if the group of top-posters have anything like divergent points of view, and write things which surprise each other. If a group consists only of people who think alike on whatever they are discussing, then they merely need to grunt their agreement, which means the information (i.e., surprise) content of their articles is low, and top-posting may be sufficient.

I suspect the ergonomic inefficiency of top-posting results from these factors:

The limits of short-term memory. A human typically can store only 3 to 5 "chunks" of information in short-term memory. When a message thread contains information new to someone who is adding to the thread, the author must process the new information in short-term memory. Clearly, if the thread is at all complex, it will overwhelm the author's short-term memory, if the author tries to absorb all of it, and then edit a top-posted reply without item-by-item reference to previous content.
- Inline posting overcomes the limitations of short-term memory, by allowing the author to break up the old content into small pieces, and then view each piece conveniently as he edits his reply just below it. This increases the chance that the author will reply to what was previously written, instead of to his faulty memory of what was written.
Laziness. Humans are naturally lazy, so a top-poster is very unlikely to scroll repeatedly downward to refresh his short-term memory as he adds new content to the thread. If the previous information in the thread is not already in his long-term memory (that is, the thread contains information new to the current author), then the top-poster is almost certain to forget what was said, and begin writing with reference to something else (i.e., his imagination about what was said).
Small displays. Few computer users have sufficient display space to show an entire message thread along with space to edit a long reply. Therefore, repetitive scrolling would be necessary to allow a top-poster to refresh his short-term memory as he responds to a complex thread containing information new to him.

Anyone who understands how short-term memory works should immediately recognize what a disaster top-posting is. Try this simple experiment sometime: send a message with a list of ten itemized questions to a habitual top-poster. See if the top-poster's reply answers each question coherently. Most likely, the top-poster will send a garbled reply that addresses only some of the questions, and some of the answers may not address the questions as originally worded, but instead will address a variant of them.

I furthermore suspect the prevalence of top-posting in the business world is why so many business people quickly throw up their hands in an e-mail discussion and demand face-to-face meetings. A group of top-posters simply cannot discuss anything with substance! They must resort to the business meeting custom because the order of discussion then returns to the inline posting order.

I am posting these thoughts here because I believe researchers should either have found, or be able to find, clear evidence for the ergonomic efficiency of inline posting. If anyone can guide us to such research, we could add it to this article, and elevate the debate from its current personal preference/tradition/religious nature to something quantitative and objectively convincing. I would add my ideas to the article directly, but until I find existing work to cite, my ideas might constitute original work. Teratornis 10:24, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Better things to do[edit]

This is the most tedious and anally retentive article I've seen yet. I got half way and couldn't bear any more. Perhaps you should put a note towards the top explaining that this is a major bugbear for various perfectionists, and that it is of little concern to anybody else. As it is, it almost seems to denigrate those who are "not even aware that any other quoting style exists". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.169.134.100 (talk • contribs) 22:12, July 12, 2006

Your response illustrates why I'm calling for research. Most people don't care about how they format their e-mail messages (which incidentally would seem to render them immune to feeling "denigrated" by this discussion), and so the typical denouncements of top-posting will bounce right off them. Every article I've read so far which denounces top-posting fails to present any hard data which proves that top-posting is objectively worse than inline posting. All I've seen so far is personal opinion that top-posting is worse; that obviously doesn't carry much weight with people who are as unconcerned about the issue as you correctly claim they are. To the average person, complaints about top-posting really do seem like nothing more than anally retentive perfectionism. (Which tells us nothing about whether it really is worse; history is full of examples of majority behaviors turning out to be wrong or sub-optimal, such as back when physicians thought there was no reason for them to wash their hands.) My goal is not to convince everybody to accept my hunch that top-posting is worse, but merely to convince one competent researcher to get the facts about it. If top-posting really does degrade a person's ability to communicate in an online discussion that becomes complicated or surprising, that should come right out in the research; and given the hundreds of millions of people who top-post their e-mails, any improvement in communication efficiency would add huge value to the economy. Teratornis 03:17, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Every article I've read so far which denounces top-posting fails to present any hard data which proves that top-posting is objectively worse than inline posting." Maybe you never came across of one of those terribly expressive sigs like:

A: Because it disturbs the natural flow of conversation.
Q: Why don't you like top-posting?

to me, this is a short and to-the-point explanation, and ubuquitous as it is, I can hardly believe you never read it. Isilanes 18:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Who hasn't seen those? Teratornis is looking for "hard data which proves that top-posting is objectively worse than inline posting"; not a newsgroup signature. — Omegatron 22:27, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

By hard data, I mean a study which finds and quantifies ergonomic differences betweent top-posting and inline posting, with objective measures such as the time it takes for participants in an e-mail exchange to exchange ideas with each other accurately, and the numbers of errors participants make when trying to understand each other. I suspect, but lack objective evidence to prove, that limits on human short-term memory must correspondingly limit top-posted messages to very simple snippets of information, almost like instant messaging. In a top-posted message thread, for example, few people could respond coherently to a list of 10 or more complicated questions by top-posting all the replies, because a respondent probably could not view the questions while editing all the replies above them. And by the way, try to imagine building Wikipedia primarily with top-posted e-mail as the data-collection tool. I don't think an object as complex as Wikipedia could result from e-mail as appears to be commonly-practiced in businesses that use Microsoft products. Which raises the question of how Microsoft manages to build anything complex. --Teratornis 19:45, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
So you don't think exchanging "very simple snippets of information" in a rapid fashion is a viable medium for communication? I think there are a few people who would disagree... — Omegatron 15:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You mean "hard data" as in "Top-posting disturbs the natural flow of conversation. If you are skeptic, see the following example: A: Because[...] Q: Why[...]"? Is there any data "harder" than actual realization by oneself? Or do you imply that some study by the MIT is "hard data", and that Teratornis would believe it rather than his own eyes and brain?

If I may interject here, I am not asking for hard data to convince myself, but to make myself more convincing to the legions of relentless top-posters who (in inadvertent combination with spammers) have rendered e-mail nearly useless as a business tool, for anything more than superficial chat-type exchanges, at least in my world. Obviously they don't care about my opinion, so I would like to prove to them how much they are hurting themselves. --Teratornis 19:45, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- "Most people don't care about how they format their e-mail messages"
- "legions of relentless top-posters"
- "hundreds of millions of people who top-post their e-mails"
- "Obviously they don't care about my opinion, so I would like to prove to them how much they are hurting themselves"
  Maybe they aren't, in fact, hurting themselves, and there's not, in fact, anything inherently, objectively wrong with "top-posting"? — Omegatron 15:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't need to read it in Science, if a two-liner can convey the idea, as no "hard data" is required to disprove the proposition that all odd numbers are prime, if I say "I agree that all odd numbers, such as 9, are prime". Isilanes 19:07, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What relevance does that signature joke have to do with this article? Think about it for a second. It hasn't any. No one actually quotes like that.

There is no objective reason why either style is universally worse than the other. Both have advantages in certain circumstances. — Omegatron 20:20, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First, the sig has relevance for the comment in the Talk page it answers to. Notice I didn't write it in the Article page? Second, you claim no-one quotes like that? How do you call:

C wrote:
I disagree

> B wrote:
> Spiderman beats the crap out of Batman

>> A wrote:
>> Is any superhero better than Batman?

I call it top-posting, and I call it disturbing the natural flow of conversation, and I say the sig applies to it and I have seen similar examples written, so people does quote like that.

Of course top-posting can be as good as bottom-posting (hardly "better") under some circunstances, like:

OK

> A wrote:
> Shall we meet in one hour?

However, when a conversation is expected (newsgroups, or long interchange of e-mails), it is objetively worse than trimming and inline quoting, and the sig above does provide a proof, as good as any other. Isilanes 12:08, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nope. That's an opinion, and inappropriate for a Wikipedia article. Wikipedia articles need to be written from a Neutral point of view. — Omegatron 15:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Etiquette[edit]

I just reverted a deletion of a block of text with no explanation, and uncommented another example which had been commented out by saying "Another totally unacceptable parody example".

In the future, if you don't like something on the page, please simply edit it to make it less "unacceptable". If it really is so bad it just has to go, please copy it to the talk page and explain what your issue is with the text, so we can discuss the matter and try to come up with something better. --Bushing 23:30, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is it not obvious that having an example which seeks to mock one posting style is not acceptable? Do you not see a problem when the top-posting example is itself criticising top-posting, while the bottom-posting example is a "serious" example of an appointment being set up? I don't have infinite time to fix every problem I come across on Wikipedia, and was simply trying to help by pointing out the worst problems. Do you think that reverting the changes, to reintroduce the excessive bias is more helpful?

Suggestions for improving this article:

Rename it to "Posting styles" - it's really only slightly about top-posting, but also covers other styles
- Ok, done this. Stevage 10:54, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Simply describe each style neutrally to begin with
- Almost there, the inline replying bit still has some parody quotes. Stevage 10:54, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Have a section at the bottom about the contention that arises about the choice of style. Somehow restrain yourselves from adding sentences like "Many people despise this form of quoting, for it resembles a forwarded message more than a discussion." Consider which posting styles are used in different environments. It is my experience that in non-technical office environments where people use Outlook to carry on long conversations, top-posting is typically used.
Refrain from attempting to determine which is the "best" style. Simply point out what they are, who uses them, and outline some of the arguments made by the most rabid defenders of each side. It is *not* Wikipedia's place to attempt to determine "the truth". Stevage 10:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup[edit]

This is ridiculous. It reads like it was written by a bottom-posting advocate in high school. "Those who use the TOFU method"?

Also, please don't use tables for visual formatting. Use DIVs and CSS. We probably have templates and global CSS styles for stuff like this, too, and if we don't, we should.

Should also cover newer things like Gmail that solve the conflict; showing only the unique material, in chronological order, and hiding material that has already been read by default, to get the best of both worlds. — Omegatron 17:01, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Best of both worlds? You mean there's something good about top-posting? I routinely send "bugs" to the Gmail team asking them to stop encouraging top-posting and making it worse for those of us who use e-mail clients that expect people to properly trim-post their replies. :P Swap 23:10, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations. — Omegatron 02:49, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Huh. "Like it was written by a bottom-posting advocate"? I just read through it, and thought it'd mostly been written by a top-posting advocate! —Steve Summit (talk) 17:02, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've rewritten it since then. Why do you think it was written by a top-posting advocate? — Omegatron 21:32, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I belatedly realized it might have changed substantially. As I read it yesterday, it seemed to be sympathetic towards and even apologetic for the top-posting POV, and somewhat unenthusiastic about bottom-posting. I'll read through it again and see if I can make any balancing changes at some point. —Steve Summit (talk) 18:37, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The phrase "apologetic for the top-posting POV" implies that you think there's something inherently wrong with it. — Omegatron 21:21, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, personally I am a bottom-poster, but that's beside the point. The fact that it sounds apologetic (a) weakens it (in the methinks-the-lady-doth-protest-too-much sense) and (b) highlights the controversy (as opposed to merely stating the facts) more than perhaps necessary. (But at the same time, it probably is worth explicitly mentioning that this is, for whatever reasons, a polarized and emotional issue, which people can and do get exercised about out of all proportion to the facts and the issue's importance.)

Please understand that I did not post here to try to provoke an argument (let alone start a POV war). Not realizing that the article had recently been rewritten, I posted an ironic comment in response to your "like it was written by a bottom-posting advocate" lament. Then, in response to your question, I gave my (subjective, opinionated) reasons for why the tone seemed as it did to me. —Steve Summit (talk) 22:00, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Check out the version before I edited it.

I tried to make it neutral. I don't know what you think isn't. What do you think is "apologetic" about it? The word "apologetic" implies that there's something inherently wrong with top-posting, which is not a neutral point of view. — Omegatron 23:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Took off the tags[edit]

I can't see that these (TONE and NPOV) are appropriate any longer. --Snori 02:55, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good. The bullet points could still be written into actual sentences and paragraphs instead of sounding like a pro and con fight. — Omegatron 03:56, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Prevalence of various styles[edit]

Usage[edit]

There is NO DATA presented to support the assertions made in this contentious passage with insinuates that bottom-posters are irrational (see use of the word "vehement").

"Vehement" doesn't mean "irrational". — Omegatron 22:33, 28 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. Change my objection to "There is NO DATA presented to support the assertions made that bottom-posters are intensely emotional or prone to expressing their opinions forcibly". Essentially your writing style is marked by broad generalisations which you fail to provide convincing data to support. There's not really a place for that in an article like this which should describe the main styles, reference any actual data there is about their ergonomic (dis)advantages, and finally provide data on their incidence if such exists. Jumble 20:20, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion: please add section on 'default' guideline[edit]

Hello, I was redirected from the Squirrelmail Soundforge project (I wanted to post a RFC there). I was asked to comply to the wikipedia Posting syle. I haven't read the whole style document, but there remain various options as far I can see (top / bottom posting, etc.). My strong suggestion is to add a 'default' posting style. This is not obliged, but in this manner, for a user such as me, the style to use is not ambiguous anymore. Please contact me for any questions on this topic: iwanjkawiki@it-inspiratie.nl

By doing so, I think the Internet gets -again- a bit more readable, an we can focus more on the essention...

Regards, Iwanjka —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iwanjka (talk • contribs) 17:08, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No data on incidence[edit]

The statement that "top posting is more common" is completely unsupported. The original citation that was appended to support this explicitly did not make this claim and instead pointed out that advocates of either top or bottom posting were prone to making unsupported claims about how either one was common back in the day. I attempted to edit this and I see that this has now been reverted, without discussion by Omegatron who says that it's "obviously" the most common. That's a completely unsupported, contentious statement.

I think it's only so contentious. It was evident to me that there was a substantial preponderance of top-posting in non-technical environments throughout my experience. I've adjusted the article to reflect this. —Raymond Keller 03:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately personal anecdotes do not prove or disprove a straightforwardly general claim that "top posting is more common". Until there's a citation that backs up this supposed statement of fact it is irresponsible and misleading to publish it as fact. I have removed this unsupported claim and am disappointed that there had been no attempt to provide a citation or published research to back it up. Jumble 20:15, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, give us a break. You know perfectly well that top-posting is on by default in E-mail software used by business, particularly businesses with wall-to-wall Windows installations, including all variants of Outlook and GroupWise. It's on by default in Apple Mail, Thunderbird, even Eudora. It's hard to find mail software where it isn't on by default. And almost nobody overcomes the defaults. It is observably true that top-posting is commonplace in business, and if you're asking us to wait around for some peer-reviewed study, or some other "citation," to be published before this article can say so, then you are misusing Wikipedia policies to remove an actual fact on specious grounds. If anything, this is an Ignore All Rules scenario. – joeclark 20:58, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have absolutely no idea what the proportions of "business" versus "non-business" emails are, and I doubt that you do either. I also know that even with GMail's awful "quick reply" I, and the people I correspond with, don't simply top-post but trim and quote. So my personal worthless anecdote differs from your personal worthless anecdote, so let's leave them both out. All I'm asking for is not to make unsupported statements. You obviously have no good support for your position or you'd have quoted it by now. The article as it stands today is clear and readable and without non-factual statements. It describes the common styles with good examples, and adding the piece of unsupported, non-fact that you'd like adds nothing positive. Jumble 13:50, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So, to be perfectly clear here, Jumble, even though it is observably true that most commonly-used E-mail programs and many uncommonly-used ones default to top-posting, and it's also observably true that almost nobody overcomes these defaults, you are indeed insisting that some kind of citation be given before this actually true statement can be included in the article? Now, just for the hell of it, how about screenshots from default installations of each program, plus estimates of each program's prevalence? Would that do, or do we have to wait till The Lancet publishes an investigation of the health effects of top-posting? – joeclark 22:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thunderbird actually defaults to bottom-posting (by putting the cursor by default beneath the quoted material; this unfortunately doesn't do anything to encourage the user to trim the quotes before replying, or to reply inline where appropriate). One of the most frequent of FAQs on the Mozillazine forums is from people asking how to change this to top-posting. *Dan T.* 00:37, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Incidence And Cause Of Top-Posting[edit]

The prior wording made claims about the commonness of top-posting in all environments (by virtue of not qualifying which). As clearly as it is common in some environments it is faux pas in others. I don't think the claim was POV as much as simply unsubstantiated, though evidently true enough if worded more precisely. I reworded more precisely and removed the POV tag.

I believe "interpersonal communication" is not so unified that it can be described on the whole, and rather should be qualified as there are distinct and substantial communities whose posting style preference differs from others. Certain non-top-posting interpersonal communities built the Internet and the Web and most email applications; you might say those communities are not just substantial, but also of consequence; they certainly deserve distinction. I left the top-posting contingent of the "interpersonal communication environment" to be suggested by the "various" qualifier on "environments".

"Customer service" is business, so redundant.

The prior wording took a stab at the cause of top-posting's commonness, saying that top-posting is common "since" it performs such-and-such functions. Pure speculation. Nearly interjected my own speculation in response.

I was able to do the equivalent of adding my own speculation through what I believe to be a non-POV means by saying that the default behavior of popular mail clients encourages top-posting. You can't say that the default behavior of any mail client enforces any style — it's obvious that you can edit an email however you please to conform to whichever style suits you. So you can't say that an email client defaults to any given style. Certainly, though, an email client encourages a style by placement of quoted text and cursor.

—Raymond Keller 03:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have actual data which shows the incidence of top-posting in business environments? If not then don't state it as fact. Jumble 20:22, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh please[edit]

You know perfectly well that the vast majority of office/business e-mail environments use top posting, and that this is encouraged by Microsoft's ubiquity. Stop abusing Wikipedia's policies to bias the article. None of the mentioned styles is "better" than any other, and even if they were, this isn't the place for a soapbox. We have to report on them in a neutral way.

This stuff is so obvious it doesn't really need any more substantiation, but here's some "data" I've found in the last few minutes. It looks like there might even be some "official" research (like [1]) done on these subjects, but I can't access most of it right now. — Omegatron 16:07, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

reply intelligently to email responses:
- "Regarding rule 2, in a work environment you may not want to selectively edit. I only keep the last message in an exchange, so I may need the history later to CMA."
- "Good list - but in the corporate world "top posting" is the norm."
- "In more common corporate exchanges, top-posting is preferred because we know what the previous messages were about and we only want to see the most recent reply."
- "This used to be a matter of preference/style until Outlook/Outlook Express became the dominant mail client. Now users are nearly forced to top post."
- "More importantly however, we live in an age of SmartPhones & PDAs, I'll be damned if I'm going to scroll through pages of useless information to get to the simply reply I wanted."
- "Most people in a corporate setting have been in on the thread, so they don't want to scroll down to see the latest reply, but the rest of the conversation is there if you need to go back for reference or save it for documentation."
- "Yes, you can install your own preferential programs on them but that doesn't change the fact that M$ Windoze is the majority and it's code is written to TOP POST."
- "Besides, if you are in a normal email environment where top-posting is the norm,"
- "Just because Microsoft tricks you into top-posting is no reason to keep it up."
- "There is obviously a lot of controvery on top posting. It has become the norm because this is how every e-mail tool out there works."
- "Are they a series of short one or two line replies? This happens in personal email, a lot, and in corporate email to such an extent that it frequently resembles chat in it's brevity. Sometimes this actually works better with top-posting."
Top posting - an extensive thread on the FreeBSD mailing list:
- "Still, I think the pattern I mentioned above is probably extremely common in Microsoft-oriented internal office networks."
- "In an office environment, when you're replying within 2 minutes of receipt of a typically short message, top posting is reasonable."
- "I like many people who are FreeBSD users in one form or another have to use the MS/Windows email clients in the process of earning a living. This is just the reality of working today in the IT field. I have always top posted to this list because that's how office outlook worked."
Top-posting is so Microsoftish - another loooooong thread on the SuSE Linux mailing list (why do people care so much??)

> This arrangement got duplicated when office  
> e-mail came along.  Sometimes, people respond  
> to a multi-point e-mail by "My comments are  
> embedded, below". Otherwise, they add their  
> two-cents worth at the top, so that busy executives  
> and managers can see the latest at a glance.

An office email that is sent and replied once is completely different
from a discussion like were're having here.

How I @#$#% HATE MS Outlook - A bottom-poster encounters the realities of the corporate e-mail environment

Abuse and the Need for Evidence[edit]

I do not know that the majority of office/business email uses top-posting, and for a group of people that care so much about it you've been singularly unsuccesful in finding a reference or citation that shows this. In fact the first citation that you appended to support this point ironically pointed out that the advocates of bottom/top posting were fond of evidence sparse claims on the topic. You're going a long way to prove his point. I'd consider your, and others, repeated attempts to make these claims to be a serious abuse of the purpose of the encyclopedia concept. I agree completely that 'None of the mentioned styles is "better" than any other, and even if they were, this isn't the place for a soapbox. We have to report on them in a neutral way.' Not only in a neutral, but a factual way. So just leave the description of the 3 styles. Add any actual research about ergonomics or frequency/incidence of styles that takes a decent sample of internet email postings spread over time and analyses them .... or else don't make claims you have not backed up.

This stuff is so obvious it doesn't really need any more substantiation,

Eh, no it's not. And the more you flounder searching for the evidence the more my point is made. The plural of anecdotes is not data. Either cite a study or else leave it out.

but here's some "data" I've found in the last few minutes. It looks like there might even be some "official" research (like [2]) done on these subjects,

I just wasted 10 minutes looking through that PDF for comparative data on top versus bottom versus inline posting. I can see none. I get the feeling you're wasting my time.

but I can't access most of it right now.

When you do access it I look forward to reading it. The multiple opinions culled below are insufficient.

24.201.107.22 17:26, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I just wasted 10 minutes looking through that PDF for comparative data on top versus bottom versus inline posting.

I didn't say it contained any. It was just an example of a paper about online communications styles with a mention of quoting styles:

"In each answer, the previous message is quoted in full or in part..."
"Conflict over the form of debates tend to focus around how to quote, how to spell, and how to post..."

Please find real data about the relative prominence of various styles before removing this information from the article again. — Omegatron 19:22, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not going to bother spending any more time removing non-factual statements about the prevalence of one type of posting vs. another on this article. You know very well that an encyclopedia is supposed to be a collection of factual material. Your opinion/belief about the incidence of top-posting is not fact, there are NO studies that appear to provide information on this, so what you are doing is publishing material which has no verifiable/falsifiable basis. It's this sort of shoddy, lazy and irresponsible material that damages the credibility of wikipedia. You, and the other people that keep putting this wholly unsupported by citation, reference or study material in should take a step back and consider whether or not it's appropriate. I haven't got the time to deal with this and I harbour a deep suspicion (due to the phrasing that you used earlier, the lack of prominence given to the RFC (which if anything is the canonical source of information on something like this), and your insistence on reverting material for which you've failed to find any acceptable backing, that you are grinding a personal axe here. Jumble 17:25, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

More relevant references[edit]

Mallon, Rebecca (2002). "Style used in electronic mail". Aslib Proceedings. 54 (1): pp. 8-22. ISSN 0001-253X. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
- "By using the “reply” option, an e-mail to which one wants to reply is reproduced. This text can be manipulated in a number of ways. Single questions and comments can be isolated and responded to, giving the resulting e-mail the appearance of a dialogue. Alternatively, the whole text can be preserved, either at the top of the reply, or underneath it. The default setting for most e-mail software places a > sign in front of every line which is a quoted line. With ongoing conversations, the number of > signs can become excessive. Tanskanen (1998, p. 150) noted that using copied text is useful in a mailing list, as many messages will have been read by each subscriber and quoting from one, along with the response serves as an aide-mémoire to all readers."
- Definitions:
  - "Word count: Advertisements added by the e-mail provider, signatures and names were not included. Where earlier e-mails had been quoted, the word count was only applied to the most recent addition to the e-mail “conversation”. Computer-generated information relating to confidentiality at the bottom of messages were also ignored."
  - "Use of quoted text/text copying: The number of previous e-mails appearing under/above the main e-mail were counted."
- "The use of quoted text was more common in the business categories, with 37 instances per 100 e-mails within the business impersonal group and 34 in business personal. There were only 23 in the social category. It is of note that in all three categories there were significantly more instances of use of quoted text in the one to one communications than in one to many. Use of quoted text was common in the business personal category, with 27 per cent of e-mails using it. It was also popular in the business impersonal category, used by 30 per cent of writers. Although business impersonal had the shortest average word count, it shows the greatest use of quoted text."
- "Use of quoted text was used more frequently in business impersonal e-mails than any other sort of e-mail. It is very useful for someone who wants to forward an e-mail and add comments, or someone who wants the ease of pressing the reply button rather than typing in an e-mail address. It is also convenient for someone who wants to reply briefly to an earlier e-mail without saying “In reference to your e-mail of [a date], which concerned …”. It links in with the low word count for this reason. There is no need to explain something when the e-mail that is being discussed can be simply forwarded. The low word count can be explained partially by the use of quoted text and partially because business communication is more factual and straightforward than social communication."
The Rough Guide to the Internet 9 by Angus J. Kennedy, Peter Buckley, Duncan Clark
- "It used to be taboo to reply at the top of a message ("top posting") until Microsoft made it the default setting".

Sigh. — Omegatron 05:41, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't all those Mallon quotations just substantiate quoting in general, not any particular style? And the Kennedy quotation only says that top-posting's no longer taboo. I don't think those references substantiate the "top-posting is more common in general, but especially in business" sentence. I happen to agree that top-posting is the more common style in business email correspondence, but these references don't substantiate it. Also, the article currently calls it the more common style in "email environments", which connotes all "email environments". Instead, we're trying to say that it's more common in business email correspondence. —63.249.64.32 05:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Read the quotations from the paper. It says that business email users quote many previous emails and then include a very short reply. Sounds like untrimmed top posting to me. — Omegatron 14:46, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is sort of interesting: Davis Foulger, in 1990, said that interleaved quoting (which he calls "quote/antiquote") was actually considered confrontational by users of early "computer conferencing" systems.(Negotiation of Rules on IBM's IBMPC Computer Conferencing Facility) Then he actually did a study in 1996 with Phillip A. Thompsen and decided it wasn't really true for most people.(Effects of Pictographs and Quoting on Flaming in Computer Media) — Omegatron 02:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

People mixing up Top Quoting, Top Posting, etc.[edit]

From what I can see people keep mixing up Top Quoting and Top Posting etc. on this article, and are overly hasty to change the article around incorrectly. For info: TOP QUOTING is the same as BOTTOM POSTING (The quoted message is at the top and the reply is on the bottom) BOTTOM QUOTING is the same as TOP POSTING (the quoted message is on the bottom and the reply is at the top) Hope this clears up the confusion! Jan.

It might be a good idea to rename the article to quoting styles? Since they are used in both newsgroups/forums ("posting") and e-mail (not called "posting")? But "top-posting" and such are very commonly used terms, so they should stay. — Omegatron 19:29, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Where is the fakeposting section?[edit]

Uhm, get your as*es into gear Wikipedians, I'm absolutely appalled there is no section in this article on fakeposting. I'm beginning to reget donating my $10 to this website. 203.27.153.4 12:29, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Never heard of it. What exactly is "fakeposting"? *Dan T.* 12:35, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

R>C>P http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_posting_styles Ignore the childish vandalism 203.27.153.4 14:06, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That page seems like original research to me; no references are cited, and some of the "types" seem rather dubious. Anyway, that is referring more to the attitude of people who post, rather than the technical style as discussed in this article (e.g., top vs. bottom posting). *Dan T.* 14:11, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why is top-posting such a bad thing?[edit]

My addition was removed with the following comment:

this was removed a while ago. see Talk:Posting_styles#Wikipedia_Etiquette for instance. non-notable, biased, and a straw man argument anyway (would actually be reverse interleaved posting)) -- Omegatron

non-notable
Non notable? A search in Google for "Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text" returns 25,200 results. That's notable.
biased
It's on the part of the article where "Some maintain that top-posting is never appropriate" is explained. It's an argument against top-posting, it's meant to be biased.
straw man argument
That is your opinion.

It would be "reverse interleaved posting" if it was a single mail, but it's not. If you look carefully you'll find it's obviously a thread.

Perhaps if you look at it this way you'll understand:

Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
> Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
>> Top-posting.
>>> What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Anyway, it doesn't matter if you think it's a straw argument, even if it really was, and even if it's biased; it's a very common argument, and that's what we are saying. -- Felipec 20:30, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but this isn't appropriate here. Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a messageboard. Please see Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a soapbox, Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up in school one day, etc. — Omegatron 00:14, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why is not appropriate?

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a messageboard
I'm not adding any discussion, nor posting any content of mine, I'm simply adding a very well known argument. If 25,000 sites state the same argument how can you say it's not a common argument? It's certainly more common than "text over, fullquote under" which doesn't even return 200 results in Google.
Wikipedia is not a soapbox
I'm not advocating anything, if you find this argument too strong to debate that's your problem. The argument exists, and it's common. Take for example the sentence "The default quote format and cursor placement of many popular e-mail applications, such as Microsoft Outlook and Gmail, encourages top-posting.". That seems to fit that policy much more; the cursor placed on top of the message is also suitable for in-line posting, who says the cursor position encourages top-posting? where are the references?
Wikipedia is not for things made up in school one day
This is not something I did, it's an argument that has years being posted in several mailing lists. It's even in a lot of formal mailing list etiquette guides. Hell, it's even on the linux-arm mailing format etiquette guide, which is maintained by the famous Russell King. As you can see even the kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman, who has written a couple of books uses this argument.

How can you say it is not notorious?

-- Felipec 19:31, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What is a caret - and what is not...[edit]

One confusing point on the main page is the misuse of the word 'caret'. Simply clicking on the word will take you to the Wikipedia caret page and there the distinction should be obvious:

'>' is not a caret, it is a mathematical sign meaning 'greater than'. It has also taken on the role of a bracket, usually known as an 'angle bracket' or occasionally a 'diamond bracket' - but it is not a caret.

'^' is a caret (or strictly a circumflex - see the caret page) '>' is a bracket.

Regards 82.69.74.5 (talk) 13:20, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Confusion about ">" prefixes[edit]

There are five reply styles implemented by Microsoft Outlook 2003:

Image:MsOutlook-EmailOptions.png

The Microsoft default is "Include original message text", which produces a result similar to the "forward" command in other mail clients. It does not insert the "> > > >" prefixes seen in the Wikipedia article -- that would be the "Prefix each line" option, which doesn't make sense because the ">" characters are for replying to individual parts of an e-mail, whereas the obvious purpose of top-posting is to accumulate a log of the previous e-mails (without altering their contents).

So, I think the Wikipedia example for top-posting is poorly chosen. Probably this confusion resulted because Mozilla Thunderbird only offers a single choice, the "Prefix each line" style. I'm fine if people want to use Wikipedia to criticize Thunderbird-style top-posting, but please also include an example of Microsoft Outlook-style, which makes more sense and is arguably the more typical usage.

Bad Wikipedia Example:

No problems.  6pm it is then.
Jim

At 10.01am Wednesday, Danny wrote: 
 
> Whoa!  Hold on.  I have job scheduled at 5:30 which mails out 
> a report to key tech staff.  Can you not push it back an hour?
> Danny
> 
> At 9.40am Wednesday, Jim wrote,   
> > I'm going to suspend the mail service for approx. thirty
> > minutes tonight, starting at 5pm, to install some updates 
> > and important fixes.
> > Jim

Improved Wikipedia Example:

No problems.  6pm it is then.
Jim

-------- Original Message --------
From: Danny <danny@example.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 10:01 AM
To: Jim <jim@example.com>
Subject: RE: Job

Whoa!  Hold on.  I have job scheduled at 5:30 which mails out 
a report to key tech staff.  Can you not push it back an hour?
Danny

-------- Original Message --------
From: Jim <jim@example.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 9:40 AM
To: Danny <danny@example.com>
Subject: Job

I'm going to suspend the mail service for approx. thirty
minutes tonight, starting at 5pm, to install some updates 
and important fixes.
Jim

Loqui 10:55, 16 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's been 3 months and nobody objected to the proposal, so I've implemented the above changes.

Loqui (talk) 07:53, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

modern email clients and intelligent email services & posting styles?[edit]

The following statement was first inserted and later modified and moved to the top section:

"Due to modern email clients and intelligent email services like Google mail that logically group messages by subject, the distinction between different posting styles is often now irrelevant."

I do not agree with it. I do not think that these new services make the different posting style distinctions irrelevant. They are and will remain important WRT accurate and efficient communication within message replies.

If no one gives me a good reason not to, then I plan to remove that statement.

Paul Wakfer (talk) 20:31, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Gmail's display makes the difference between the different posting styles irrelevant, and combines the advantages of each style. For instance:

"Top posting is bad because the chronology of messages is not in normal reading order"
- Gmail's chronology is displayed in normal reading order with oldest messages at the top and newest at the bottom, even if the people sending you messages use a different posting style.
"Top posting is bad because it duplicates content with each message"
- Even if people double-post, Gmail's display hides everything except the unique content in each message.
"Bottom posting is bad because it requires users to scroll to the bottom of a message to see the new additions"
- Gmail's display hides all parts of the message except the new addition, so there is no scrolling through the message required.
"Top posting is good because the newest content is at the top where the user can see it immediately"
- Gmail's display hides messages you have already read, so that the top shows the most recent unread content, especially useful in long threads.
etc. etc.

Instead of trying to force senders to change their habits, they just made the differences in style invisible to the recipient, making a better system that combines the best parts of both. Same things apply to Google Groups, even though newsgroup conventions are different from email. Other mail/news readers that thread in the same way would have the same effect, though Google is the only one I'm personally aware of. — Omegatron (talk) 18:04, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, as long as a significant part of the user base is using something other than those "modern, smart" readers, posting style remains an issue. And if it's ever the case that so high a percentage of the users are using such systems, then there would be no point to quoting back any of the content at all (except possibly for trimmed snippets for context in interleaved replies), so top-posting with fullquotes would be useless and wasteful (as always). *Dan T.* (talk) 19:07, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well of course it's going to continue to be relevant to people who continue to use clients for which it is relevant. The point is that it's irrelevant to the user of the modern client. How shall we word this?

Even if everyone used Gmail, top-posting with fullquotes would still be just as beneficial as it always has been, for keeping a record of the entire conversation in its original context, since email is not Usenet, and the thread isn't archived in public for new participants to read. — Omegatron (talk) 00:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Even in Gmail, posting styles are important. It would be pretty difficult to understand threads of more than 10 messages, specially if they are big. -- Felipec (talk) 07:10, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

By what logic? I'm looking at a Wikien thread with 50 messages in it, and not having any difficulty "understanding" it. Why would I? — Omegatron (talk) 00:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, with simple replies the quoting style is not important in Gmail, but when you reply separately to different parts of the mail anything but inline would be messy. Have you ever reviewd a patch in top-posting? You need a way to refer to specific parts of the diff. Gmail doesn't help with that. - Felipec (talk) 11:07, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The thread I mentioned has both top posting and inline replying. It's perfectly readable and understandable no matter what each author used. I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

No I haven't reviewed a patch. What does that have to do with Gmail? Gmail doesn't prevent people from inline replying where it makes sense to do so; I do it all the time. — Omegatron (talk) 22:51, 7 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proving the point that quoting styles are still relevant even in Gmail. -- felipec (talk) 10:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Metahumor[edit]

Does anyone else find it absolutely hilarious that top-posting advocates mess with the article, come to this talk page to whine, say how top-posting is perfectly natural and bottom-posting is completely bizarre, and do so by bottom posting on this very page? 76.126.134.152 (talk) 00:06, 23 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

... and sometimes with interleaved replies! ;) I theorize that most top-posters started as "natural" top-posters: their email client put the cursor before the quoted portion on the first reply they ever composed, so that's where they've typed ever since. The New Section tab and the Edit link in Wikipedia put the cursor at the bottom, so they think that's most appropriate too.

And then there's the fact that in most email clients, by default the newest messages are listed first. Therefore new material "must" go first. --75.173.53.197 (talk) 15:36, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]