Re: top posting

Peter Childs wrote:

> On 12/12/2007, *Stephen Cook* <sclists@gmail.com
> <mailto:sclists@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     I am subscribed to some other technical mailing lists on which the
>     standard is top posting. Those people claim that filing through
>     interleaved quotes or scrolling to the bottom just to see a sentence or
>     two is a waste of their time. It is the same thing only backwards.
>
>     Me, I don't care either way. I try to conform to whatever is the
>     standard for whatever list it is. Why annoy the people giving free
>     support?
>
>     I suspect that neither is truly better, and that some of the original /
>     very early / expert members just preferred bottom posting for whatever
>     reasons, and it propagated into the "standard" for this list.
>
>
> Top posting is bad grammar its like English if I wrote the sentence
> backwards would you under stand it?
>
> Its as simple as that I can't under stand whats going on if I need to
> start at the back of (or bottom) and work back. Its like reading a book
> you start at the beginning and work to the end, Top Posting is like
> putting the last chapter or the conclusion at the start. It just does
> not work.
>
> Cutting the original is summarizing what gone before so we can we know
> the story so far quickly. Maybe we should start teaching this in schools?
>
> Different languages have different rules there are languages that do
> read right to left rather than left to right it does not mean there is
> anything wrong with those languages, They are just not used here.
>
> It understand you would backwards sentence the wrote I. If English like
> its grammar bad is posting top.
>
> (Sounds like something from Star Wars and the meaning has changed)
>
>
> Peter Childs

Geez I was just throwing in my non-partisan (or should I call it
"secular" in this case) 2 cents...

Just as different languages have different rules, different mailing
lists can have different conventions. The is no law, natural or
otherwise, that defines how to respond to an email in any and every
situation. My only point was: when in Rome...

Anyone claiming an absolute right and wrong in this is just
prostelatizing... it isn't even a "rule", it is just a convention or
suggestion for getting more responses (because it also includes the
knowledgeable people on this list that can't read backwards).

Anyway, I do not want to get [further] involved in this, I'm going back
to lurking until I learn enough about PostgreSQL to make formatting
demands in exchange for my help.

-- Stephen