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Posted by Harlan Messinger on 11/23/67 11:43
192.168.0.1 wrote:
> It doesn't make a sense to me!
>
> When you see the subject and you've read the first post, than if, you
> want to answer, my logic tells me, that instead a force users to scroll
> down and find (sometimes very far from the top!) these 3 words I was
> looking for, better put it on the top!
Following your logic a little further, if you're *assuming* that someone
reading your post has already read the posts preceding it, then there
isn't any reason to be quoting the preceding posts in your post, and
you'd omit them altogether.
But the reason for including [relevant portions of] previous posts in
yours is because a large part of the time people aren't following
threads from start to finish in linear fashion. People come and go from
newsgroups and may have downloaded your post after the earliest posts in
the thread have already disappeared from their news server. Or they may
have come across your post in a search, and haven't read all the
preceding posts.
So there's a good reason to included relevant preceding material in your
own posts for the sake of providing context without forcing the user to
find earlier posts that may not even be available any more. OK, now that
we've established that people may be deriving the context for your
comments entirely from the material you're quoting from earlier
messages, don't you think it's easier for them to get that context if
they can read the material in a sensible order?
The key is:
1. Trim earlier material not necessary for understanding the context
behind your response.
2. If placing your entire response after the quoted material would leave
it clear which part of the quoted material each of your points relates
to, then place it at the end.
3. Otherwise, place each of your points after the preceding material to
which it responds.
[snip]
> When I see a someone posting an answer on the top, what a relief.
> Don't have to scroll down!
Oh, yeah, what an arduous burden scrolling is! Sometimes I scroll so
much I have to take a nap afterwards.
> Easier and faster, especially, when the previous message is long and
> whole, which is wrong as well IMHO.
If you are going to assume that the user isn't going to read all that
text, then why are you wasting space including it? Leave it out. That's
another problem with Usenet responses--people who don't trim previous
posts, polluting every message with the entirety of the thread, taking
up space, and obscuring the message.
> When I see someone top posting, I do appreciate because I know, that
> under his (her) post is nothing I didn't read before. When someone is
> answering on certain elements of the post, that's entire different story.
In addition to what I said above, you're not thinking ahead. You're
ignoring what happens when other people respond to you, and other people
respond to them. What if *they* are answering certain elements of your
posts and subsequent ones? In that case, *they* will place their
responses after the relevant portions. So your contribution is above the
preceding material, and their contributions are below the material to
which they relate. The result is a post that isn't in any order at all.
> I think I will top post regardless opinions of others because... I like
> that way!
Are you posting for your own comprehension or for the comprehension of
others?
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