[139597] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Top-posting (was: Barracuda Networks is at it again:
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (JC Dill)
Tue Apr 12 11:22:43 2011
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2011 08:22:34 -0700
From: JC Dill <jcdill.lists@gmail.com>
CC: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
In-Reply-To: <BANLkTikZD+Qww3C6BKFbxkX5UpCFaxWcMQ@mail.gmail.com>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On 12/04/11 6:47 AM, William Herrin wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 2:49 AM, Tim Chown<tjc@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>> But I'm afraid times have changed; bottom-posted email is now an annoyance
>> to most just as a slow-loading web page would be.
> Then you're doing it wrong. You're supposed to trim the original down
> to just the context that clarifies your response. That's the other
> problem with top-posters... nobody trims, so if I want to understand
> what they're attempting to say I have to scroll down, read all the
> previous messages and then guess which part they're replying to.
>
> Usually the lazy top-poster hasn't said anything worth that much effort.
An even bigger problem is that the lazy top-poster often misses critical
issues that either clarify the post they are replying to (making their
reply irrelevant) or forgets to reply to something critical in the
quoted text. I run into this often at $dayjob, where I can't ask more
than one question in an email because the top-posted reply generally
only addresses the first question.
The people who top post see this as a feature - they get their reply
composed and sent off faster and can then move on to other things. They
don't understand why they fail to thrive in their jobs as co-workers
start to route discussions around them and then ultimately they are the
first to be laid off because they aren't seen as an essential part of
the team.
jc
