I take your point that the whole message should be read before replying.
Thank you. However, one can top-post and bottom-post without reading a
message just as well as one can when interleaving a reply :-). Reply
style is separate from the first issue (people should read their mail
fully), because how one replies really depends on what one is trying to
accomplish.
btw top-posting is not the spawn of evil demons, it's perfectly
appropriate in some situations, e.g. this one, where the original mail
is just attached for possible reference.
swb
On 09/20/2010 14:20 EDT, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
One of the problems I have seen emerge on many IETF mailing lists is the
habit of fisking.
By fisking I mean responding to a post line by line *while reading it
for the first time*.
Now sometimes a line by line response is entirely appropriate. If
someone raises six different issues, you want to respond to each one
separately. But other times I see posts of the following form:
We should buy the red van
Are you crazy, the last three vans were yellow. Only an idiot would buy
a red van (etc)
Because even though yellow is traditional the red one is on sale for
$1000 off.
I seem to be reading an increasing number of posts on various lists
where it is very clear to me that the poster did not bother to read the
entire message before starting their reply. In particular I have read
rather a lot of people starting off by accusing their opponent of being
ignorant of issues that their opponent actually states only a few
paragraphs further on.
Traditionally, top-posting (or bottom posting) has been discouraged in
favor of responding line by line. I think it is time to reverse that
preference.
In particular I find that arguments are often less combative and
somewhat shorter in mediums where people are forced to restate the issue
they are objecting to in their own words.
--
Website: http://hallambaker.com/
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