Re: Apology to all for my Netiquette "Sorry"

In article <44270e37.8722265@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, secretspam@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
says...
> AOL connected to the internet, and even before newsgroups, back in
> message boards of BBSs.

I would have been dropped if I top posted on /any/ of the BBS's I jacked 
onto.

> 
> It wasn't until access to the internet and the online experience in
> general became more popular that people with poor memories and/or
> messaging software needed 2 crutches.

Oh ffs. Here's a challenge. Find a thread from the earliest archives of 
google. Any thread. This one is from 1985.

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/net.music/browse_frm/thread/b4a49e041f6
ebb7c/64862e665d496c48?lnk=st&q=morning+group+best&rnum=609&hl=en#
64862e665d496c48
http://tinyurl.com/lecqr

Guess what. NOBODY top posted in those days. It is a new phenomenon, 
im****ted by people to whom PC's were for something other than work.


> One crutch is to have the
> entire contents of the thread thus far re-quoted in every message
> because they don't read messages in thread groupings (instead probably
> using date sorting or no sorting).

That's just as bad, maybe, worse. Yes.  I concede that top posting is a 
lesser crime than not snipping irrelevant content.

> The other crutch is that their
> minds become too confused by reading new material 1st, then poking
> down below for ther context.
>

It is simply a case of trying to convey information as accurately as 
possible. Try following a thread properly on google. Try extracting 
information from a thread which has been almost exclusively top posted.
 
> Read messages in thread order and you don't need to re-read all the
> goddamn history before each new bit.  Hell, most times you don't need
> much of any quoting as you just read it anyway in the previous
> message!
> 
On the one hand we ask people to google because we get sick of all the 
same questions over and over and over and on the other you wish to make 
that impossible for them by hiding context in reams of disjointed 
waffle.

-- 
Alan LeHun