bottom-post vs top-post, email readibility

[gusl]

This lack of standards about email can be an annoyance for me. Some people are top-posters, some are bottom-posters. Newsgroups/mailing lists enforce bottom-post. Top-post has the advantage of not requiring scrolling (though GMail's "Hide quoted text" makes this obsolete). Bottom-post (especially when divided into several chunks) allows you to read the messages as a conversation. I'm a fan of quoting, because it saves me from typing.

I prefer bottom-post, but I tend to yield to the other person's style, but only if they write the first reply... If neither person yields, the conversation could end up like this (Bottomy replying):


-----------------------------------------------------------

See you soon.

Bottomy wrote:
|Toppie wrote:
||Does 5:00pm work for you?
||
||Bottomy wrote:
|||Toppie wrote:
||||I was thinking of playing squash. You interested?
||||
|||||Bottomy wrote:
||||||Toppie wrote:
||||||What are you doing later today?
|||||
|||||No plans yet. What about you?
|||
|||Yes. Where and what time?
|
|Sounds good. See you then.

It's even worse if you yield too late, and make inconsistent.

...or if they use different character, one can get textures like:
>|>|>|>

I haven't seen ':' as a quotation marker for a long time.

Comments

[inferno0069.livejournal.com]

I'm on a list with someone that uses initials for quoting and only quotes one level deep. e.g.

"GL" == Gustavo Lacerda <gustavolacerda@example.com>
"SOG" == Some Other Guy <sog@example.com>

I need some example text, so I'll just mention that I'm usually in favor of
bottom-posting. Also, since I need an example of the quoting I'm demonstrating,
I'll note that you said

  GL> I haven't seen ':' as a quotation marker for a long time.

to which someone might reply

  SOG> I use ':' all the time! Except for Thursdays, when I use '#'.

As for myself, I've only ever (intentionally) used stacking '>'s, but I noticed
that mutt and/or vim recognize quite a few symbols. I've sometimes wondered how
so many could become "standard" enough to merit inclusion as a default.

[hober.livejournal.com]

They likely use Emacs; that looks like the output from SuperCite.

[lordspaz.livejournal.com]

I would just like to go on the record as a top.

[wjl.livejournal.com]

I always respond to the point in question, even if it's not in the right place -- it's not "bottom" vs. "top" but context vs no-context. I would have the conversation above as follows:

See you soon.

William wrote:
|Toppie wrote:
||Does 5:00pm work for you?
|
|Sounds good. See you then.
|
||William wrote:
|||Toppie wrote:
||||I was thinking of playing squash. You interested?
|||
|||Yes. Where and what time?
|||
|||||William wrote:
||||||Toppie wrote:
|||||||What are you doing later today?
||||||
||||||No plans yet. What about you?

[mauitian.livejournal.com]

Top-post for short emails.
Bottom-post in chunks one level deep for long emails (unless keeping the second level is desirable in places).

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

This is exactly what I do, if by short you mean 1-3 sentences, i.e. the email has only one topic (this usually means 1 paragraph).

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

me three... I agree with your complaints here.. it's annoying that there are two standards; I prefer bottom posting, especially since I spent a lot of time on newsgroups at one point in life; yet I end up yielding to whatever the current thread is doing, or sometimes top posting if it's a quicky.

smiley

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Very timely, I ran into this thread:

:->Subject: COMMENT: Colour Blind People and Link Colours
:->
:->>Should we be concerned about changing link colors -- particularly to red --
:->>given color-blindness??

[williamallthing.livejournal.com]

sup (my email client) scolds you if you top post. it also does comment snipping. the best of both worlds!

http://sup.rubyforge.org