[LMB] List Love

[anmar mirza]

On 3/1/08, Pat Mathews <mathews55 at msn.com> wrote:
>
>
> My email program buts my posting at the top of everything. It will not let
> me cut and paste until I have actually typed something in it, so I can't
> start it at the bottom. It won't even let me clip what others have written
> until I've typed something in my own post. So - my best bet is to not post
> at all, and my second best is to post and them cut everything I'm replying
> to.


Since I started on the net in the days when USENET had maybe a hundred
newsgroups (well, actually with Compuserve and local bbs's, but those don't
really count since they had no network connection at the time), top posting,
when it became
popular, was a bit of a surprise and annoyance to me.

Since then, I tend to top post in email strings where continuity of topic is
important and nothing is going to be snipped,
such as in professional correspondence.  In personal, or conversational type
formats I find that snipping and
interspersing comments is superior, but it relies on the >s working well and
it takes a little more effort, but the
end product is much nicer and easier to read.  Properly done, a quoted part
of a message being replied to should not be more than a page, less is
better.  Gmail handles such things pretty well and is the best free email
client I've found
yet, and its spam elimination is incredibly good.

I pretty much think that the established social conventions of any group
you're with are best if followed, especially
when they are not particularly important.  I've got far more important
things to waste my time on and if I don't
like the local conventions, I'll not participate.





-- 
Anmar Mirza EMT, N9ISY, Central Region NCRC Coordinator
Owner Lost Creek Packs, blog.myspace.com/anmarmirza