Comments on: Context, please!

By: Tiffany

Tiffany — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:09:15 +0000

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By: Timothy Knox

Timothy Knox — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 18:34:14 +0000

Top-posting will not go away so long as Outlook (the dominant email client) makes that not only the default, but practically impossible to avoid. The best criticism I ever saw on the subject was one man’s .sig quote:
A: Because it disrupts the normal flow of conversation.
Q: Why is top-posting a bad idea.

By: Richard Veryard

Richard Veryard — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:50:36 +0000

You are right that excessive pruning may kill the exchange, but that doesn’t mean you should never prune. Long emails often contain embarrasing stuff at the end, which leak internal discussions to other departments or companies, because people are too lazy to prune. The correct answer is to replace email with proper collaboration software.

By: Lyger

Lyger — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 18:00:59 +0000

I don’t mind quoting full context when needed, but MAN, people should at least trim off excessive sig files, disclaimers, and email list footers… ;)
p.s. post approved!

By: Rich Kulawiec

Rich Kulawiec — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:56:40 +0000

Top-posting, like full-quoting or HTML markup, is used only by rude, ignorant newbies. Anyone using a quality mail reader and observing basic standards of netiquette should be able to read and write email that is concise, automatically threaded, and contains enough in-line context to be comprehensible — but no more. Not only is excessive quoting wasteful of system and network resources, but it wastes human resources — and it shows disrespect for the recipient(s).

By: Walter

Walter — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:37:37 +0000

Snipping context, however, does add to the chaos.

By: kurt wismer

kurt wismer — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:26:33 +0000

your chess master analogy doesn’t really do your plea justice, as one could easily say that the chess master doesn’t care about what the board looked like before, he only cares about what it looks like right now – so in email you shouldn’t care about what was being discussed before but only about what is being discussed right now…
if i don’t use a piece of information sent to me when it’s originally sent then i fully expect to have to data-mine my mail archive to get it and i’m ok with that…
it probably comes down to personal taste, but there are those of us who follow RFC1855 (more or less), and then there are those who think top posting is ok or that quoting should be more liberal… as much as i can’t stand top posting and excessive quoting, though, i won’t be holding my breath waiting for other people to stop doing it…