Talk:Posting styles

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Just an anecdote:

I just had to show a user how to set up Thunderbird to top-posting by default because she said that when she bottom-posted her correspondents (non-technical people all) would not even scroll down to the bottom of the message before replying with "You didn't send me any message- all got was the quote" or some such.

That's usually a sign that the writer didn't trim sufficiently. Unfortunately, Thunderbird, when set to bottom-post, doesn't really encourage trimming, as the cursor just starts out at the bottom ready to type a response. Many think the ideal is for a mail program to start the cursor at the top so you can move down through the quoted material to trim and to reply inline, but unfortunately this encourages the ignorant to top-post. *Dan* 17:24, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

I'm considering adding a {{npov}} tag to the article. The discussion of the use of the top-posting method in the beginning as rude is worded as a point-of-view, not in encyclopedic phrasing. I'll probably first try to find a different wording- Bevo 22:19, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Speeding up reading:

Modern mail/news agents are powerful enough to sort messages chronologically within thread, and to cache even previously-read messages. To follow the flow of a thread, all the viewer need do is select the thread and then chain forward or backward.

Inline replies should be used whenever there is MORE than one block of new text. But if there is ONLY one block of new text, why keep on using procedures that are less convenient these days?

When an only block of NEW text is placed at the top, it is seen as soon as the message is accessed. Keep the referred-to material at the bottom - those who wish to read it can scroll down; while those who want to read THIS message without any delay whatsoever will be saved scrolling. --Mikus Grinbergs <mikus@bga.com> 21:55, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry. That entire thing parsed as nonsense. Please try again. --Ihope127 21:24, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I think that the emphasis should be on readability. What is the information you want the reader to grok? Is the information order-specific: "Ok, considering ___ and ___ I want the reader to understand ___". In which case the writer probably wants to trim and post below.

A lot of emails are context specific, they rely on the reader to remember that email thread from 18 minutes ago - and I think a good style guide would encourage people to use trim-posting to stop this. The reader is busy. They're away from their desk at the moment. Their mind is distracted elsewhere... the point of trim-posting is not to trim post, it's to make the message complete and self-defining.

This is what Whatsername does with Harry Potter books, each book is complete and while it has an ordered place in a larger story, you can get all the information you need to understand the plot of book 3 without having read or remembered books one and two.

It's also important to retain enough information so that 8 months down the track the content of the email remains a valid historical record of the communication.

I think there should also be an example of a perfectly valid top post:

Hi guys,

My friend sent me this email the other day and I think it makes good sense.
I'm worried about the implications it might have. 
What do you think? What should I say to her?

Brent

> Brent,
>
> Example email here with a bunch of talk about that thing.
> 
> Cheers,
>
> Brent's friend.

and an example of a perfectly valid bottom post - i can't be bothered finding/sourcing one right now... but I'm thinking of an email to an international supplier on a change to a big order or something... where you want to preserve the other party's communication holus bolus and maintain as much of the original party's content as you can.

Brentstrahan 03:34, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

The above example seems to be a case of forwarding rather than replying, and, while there are some similarities in formatting between the two, there are also differences because of the different purpose; in the case of forwarded messages, it often makes perfect sense to top-post because your comments are intended to introduce the forwarded message (which the recipients probably haven't seen yet) rather than to respond to it. *Dan T.* 15:01, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] POV

In my opinion, this posting is insufficiently POV. It tries so hard to be NPOV that it fails to clearly characterise the points being made by either side, in consequence of which it does not actually make it clear why the article exists at all.

I suspect part of the answer is to move the article to 'Email quoting style' and redirect Top_posting and Bottom_posting to there, and then clarify the arguments of each side.

In my opinion, that would make it clear how weak most of the arguments in favor of top posting are, but that's just me. :-)
--Baylink 18:25, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

I have added a section which lists the points usually made when this issue is debated on Usenet. I think it is useful to have such things detailed in one place, rather than hinted at throughout the rest of the article. (It may even be useful to move them nearer the introduction (?)) However, I have to admit I find it hard to recall many pro-top-posting views (perhaps because I generally use the interleaved method myself?) and so the pro-TP side of the argument is a little weak. The 'not wanting to scroll down' argument is the only one I can recall ever being made by TP advocates. JavaKid 10:45, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
I fail to see anything POV in the article as it stands today, nor is there any rationale for the NPOV tag provided on this Talk page. Accordingly, I am removing the NPOV tag. --Splitpeasoup 02:58, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, the section entitled "Usage" makes completely unsupported assertions (hiding behind the word seems) that objectors to top-posting come from the old days of Usenet and are "vehement". There is NO DATA quoted in the article to support this. The article should be trimmed to describe simply the three common-styles and the arguments pro/con. All the rest is opinion and until it's supported it has no place being treated as fact. Jumble 14:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] funny thing

I will add to the religious fire that is "fill in the blank" posting. each has a time and place, newsgroups - bottom-posting or trimming. workplace - top-posting. without it being lenghty this is keeping linux off of the desktop. I use Suse9.3 in a MS network, but my email client Evolution forces me to bottom-post, normally not an issue, but when you look like an idiot cause you are the only one out of line with EVERYONE in ALL of the companies I have worked for top-posting, shouldn't etiquette meet todays majority. I am considering reformatting my machine and putting on Windows so I can communicate properly with everyone at work, all my emails bung up the message flow. Now I'm not even trying to take sides, but I just want options, If I bottom post at an org that uses top-posting, i'll never get anything across, the message flow is messed up and i'll just confuse everybody. if i go for trimming, i have to go through 10+ emails picking out choice lines, etc, sending a short email has now become too much work (i'm not lazy, just very busy, 5 minutes to send an email means no email from me, i've got better things to do). if i got to top-post than, bang, the answer is immediately there, all history is included below if you want to see it, but most people in the reply have that info already and it's just a reminder of info, click send and i'm done in 20-30 seconds, time is precious. In newsgroups, reverse the above, bottom-posting gives you the question followed by the answer, great, fantastic, but not what i want at a business (i don't care to read the question 50 times that the email goes back and forth, i save the delete key for such repititive reading, i want the answer i already know the question, giving me the question 50 times isn't necessary, i have a fabulous tool called a mind and already remember the question, don't tell me it again. Also, i do see the link to the RFC, and i dare any reader of this to step outside and ask the first passerby even what an RFC is. these are technical standards, they are not standards for etiquette even if they claim to be, if they were, people would have actually heard about it. 99.99999% of people are not going to read a small item about netiquette (god i hate buzzwords) in a tiny link in the middle of a bunch of engineers notes, let alone let an engineer dictate what practical etiquette would be. if you are all about proper etiquette than off the top of your head where does the salad fork go?

I, for one, bottom/interleaved post, with judicious trimming, everywhere... at home, at work, in private mail, in newsgroups/mailing lists. Generally, I trim out everything but the important parts of the most recent message I'm replying to; it's rare that there's any need to quote back any of the earlier parts of a long thread. People who don't trim end up with messages dragging a huge stinking load of crap off their bottoms, including lots of signature blocks, disclaimers, ads, list footers, or whatever else is added by the clients/servers the thread has passed through. *Dan T.* 22:50, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

anonymous me again - Personally I wish this etiquette thing had been extended as far as the users of the internet and not just the geek/engineer crowd. I'm fine with bottom posting and inline, but it's also nice to keep up with the current established message flow, if people disagree than i get emails where i scroll up to the top, then to the bottom, rinse repeat until the final answer is somewhere in the middle, ah yes, that is practical. I asked everyone I met after work yesterday about what they thought was proper etiquette in replies (not newsgroups) and everyone said put your reply on the top and no one had heard of an RFC. logically and personally, bottom-posting and inline make an easier read, but 95% of the world top posts and if someone jumps into the conversation and breaks that order, than communication begins to degrade without a lot of trimming. in the end, my pointless is this - can't we all just get along -either pointy haired bosses will have to learn netiquette and RFC's (ha ha) or engineers will need to get communication skills on how to use various items, but i think both are like matter and anti-matter coming together. me, i guess i'll just live with it and trim and bottom-post, still makes me the odd man out in 2000 people. but in the long run i find the linux mail clients generally behave according to the RFC, but i do see this as a problem for wide spread acceptance among the user class - they will complain, they will be ignored, but they will complain and then just not use it.

I'm sure the majority will unthinkingly go with whatever Outlook Express does as its default - and will be perfectly happy in doing so. Perhaps the solution (if one is indeed needed) is to lobby MS/Google to change their mail clients to be bottom-posting by default (or at least support an option to switch it that way, in the case of GMail)? After all, it's not as if your workmates are active supporters of top posting, they are merely slavishly following a style that OE/Gmail etc. have dictated to them.
I think if someone was to spark a good honest debate about the matter, perhaps in a forum (magazine?) which cuts across both technical and non-technical users, then the merits and power of bottom posting might be better understood, and the client vendors might more readily support it? JavaKid 12:03, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
Certainly, there's much that the vendors can do to make their software more friendly to proper bottom/interleaved posting instead of totally hostile to it like Outhouse / Outhouse Excess currently are. However, simply making the cursor start at the bottom (as Thunderbird / SeaMonkey currently do) is not a fully satisfactory solution either; it encourages pure bottom posting without any trimming, the sort of thing that gives bottom posting a bad name and makes pro-top-posters whine a lot in forums about how they have to scroll way down to read the response. Many seasoned trim-posters actually prefer mail clients to start the cursor at the top (as Pegasus Mail does) so they can begin trimming there. Of course, the signature block belongs at the very bottom, and the mail client shouldn't put in blank lines at the top to invite a top-posted reply. Unfortunately, the top-positioned cursor would still end up "encouraging" top-posting among novices. There's really no way for software to "force", or even encourage, good posting style; it seems to be an acquired taste which must be learned. *Dan T.* 12:55, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


mmmm, me thinks some kind of change in the prompt our interface in reply emails is needed here. rules and etiquette are not going to be read by the majority (the majority have no idea where to find these things or that they even exist, having an RFC on etiquette for newbies is like the demolition notice posting for Arthur's house in HHGTTG), so if a standard is to be met it has to come out and be apparent at the time the email is being written. off the top of my head putting something like "^" or any character before each line, these lines will be auto-trimmed unless you delete the character yourself, seems odd at first, but people who take the default will be sending clean replies and those who really want to include lines have to manually delete that character and deleting one character is not too difficult. i think that would enourage good emails.


[edit] Ergonomics

Has anyone researched the ergonomics of top-posting vs. inline posting? That is, how the various posting styles affect an e-mail author's ability to generate better content?

In my cursory online search for supporting evidence, I've read several Web pages, FAQs, etc., which denounce top-posting and promote inline posting. However, the central argument in every one of these pages is that top-posting is bad because it annoys the author of the page by making previously-written threads harder for the next reader to read. This comes dangerously close to making the entire argument one of personal taste, arbitrary tradition, etc., and thus is unconvincing to someone who is not personally annoyed by top-posting. A better argument would result from objective research which finds top-posting inferior as a way for people to communicate.

In my reading of various discussion groups and message authors, some who top-post and some who inline-post, I've noticed a distinct tendency for habitual top-posters to be less capable of replying coherently to what the previous author(s) wrote. Instead, top-posters tend to reply to what they think the previous author(s) wrote, in all but the most superficial discussions. The effect is similar to the party game in which someone whispers a short story into the ear of the next person seated at the table, who in turn whispers it to the next person, and so on, and when the last person repeats the story out loud, it has become something completely different.

I have yet to find an advocate of inline posting who makes it clear that top-posting not only degrades the presentation of thread content, it also tends to degrade the thread content itself, by preventing posters from understanding what they are replying to. In other words, if top-posting is the norm in an online discussion group, the group is unlikely to handle a complex discussion as well as a group of inline posters, especially if the group of top-posters have anything like divergent points of view, and write things which surprise each other. If a group consists only of people who think alike on whatever they are discussing, then they merely need to grunt their agreement, which means the information (i.e., surprise) content of their articles is low, and top-posting may be sufficient.

I suspect the ergonomic inefficiency of top-posting results from these factors:

  • The limits of short-term memory. A human typically can store only 3 to 5 "chunks" of information in short-term memory. When a message thread contains information new to someone who is adding to the thread, the author must process the new information in short-term memory. Clearly, if the thread is at all complex, it will overwhelm the author's short-term memory, if the author tries to absorb all of it, and then edit a top-posted reply without item-by-item reference to previous content.
    • Inline posting overcomes the limitations of short-term memory, by allowing the author to break up the old content into small pieces, and then view each piece conveniently as he edits his reply just below it. This increases the chance that the author will reply to what was previously written, instead of to his faulty memory of what was written.
  • Laziness. Humans are naturally lazy, so a top-poster is very unlikely to scroll repeatedly downward to refresh his short-term memory as he adds new content to the thread. If the previous information in the thread is not already in his long-term memory (that is, the thread contains information new to the current author), then the top-poster is almost certain to forget what was said, and begin writing with reference to something else (i.e., his imagination about what was said).
  • Small displays. Few computer users have sufficient display space to show an entire message thread along with space to edit a long reply. Therefore, repetitive scrolling would be necessary to allow a top-poster to refresh his short-term memory as he responds to a complex thread containing information new to him.

Anyone who understands how short-term memory works should immediately recognize what a disaster top-posting is. Try this simple experiment sometime: send a message with a list of ten itemized questions to a habitual top-poster. See if the top-poster's reply answers each question coherently. Most likely, the top-poster will send a garbled reply that addresses only some of the questions, and some of the answers may not address the questions as originally worded, but instead will address a variant of them.

I furthermore suspect the prevalence of top-posting in the business world is why so many business people quickly throw up their hands in an e-mail discussion and demand face-to-face meetings. A group of top-posters simply cannot discuss anything with substance! They must resort to the business meeting custom because the order of discussion then returns to the inline posting order.

I am posting these thoughts here because I believe researchers should either have found, or be able to find, clear evidence for the ergonomic efficiency of inline posting. If anyone can guide us to such research, we could add it to this article, and elevate the debate from its current personal preference/tradition/religious nature to something quantitative and objectively convincing. I would add my ideas to the article directly, but until I find existing work to cite, my ideas might constitute original work. Teratornis 10:24, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Better things to do

This is the most tedious and anally retentive article I've seen yet. I got half way and couldn't bear any more. Perhaps you should put a note towards the top explaining that this is a major bugbear for various perfectionists, and that it is of little concern to anybody else. As it is, it almost seems to denigrate those who are "not even aware that any other quoting style exists". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.169.134.100 (talk • contribs) 22:12, July 12, 2006.

Your response illustrates why I'm calling for research. Most people don't care about how they format their e-mail messages (which incidentally would seem to render them immune to feeling "denigrated" by this discussion), and so the typical denouncements of top-posting will bounce right off them. Every article I've read so far which denounces top-posting fails to present any hard data which proves that top-posting is objectively worse than inline posting. All I've seen so far is personal opinion that top-posting is worse; that obviously doesn't carry much weight with people who are as unconcerned about the issue as you correctly claim they are. To the average person, complaints about top-posting really do seem like nothing more than anally retentive perfectionism. (Which tells us nothing about whether it really is worse; history is full of examples of majority behaviors turning out to be wrong or sub-optimal, such as back when physicians thought there was no reason for them to wash their hands.) My goal is not to convince everybody to accept my hunch that top-posting is worse, but merely to convince one competent researcher to get the facts about it. If top-posting really does degrade a person's ability to communicate in an online discussion that becomes complicated or surprising, that should come right out in the research; and given the hundreds of millions of people who top-post their e-mails, any improvement in communication efficiency would add huge value to the economy. Teratornis 03:17, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
  • "Every article I've read so far which denounces top-posting fails to present any hard data which proves that top-posting is objectively worse than inline posting." Maybe you never came across of one of those terribly expressive sigs like:
A: Because it disturbs the natural flow of conversation.
Q: Why don't you like top-posting?
to me, this is a short and to-the-point explanation, and ubuquitous as it is, I can hardly believe you never read it. Isilanes 18:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Who hasn't seen those? Teratornis is looking for "hard data which proves that top-posting is objectively worse than inline posting"; not a newsgroup signature. — Omegatron 22:27, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Etiquette

I just reverted a deletion of a block of text with no explanation, and uncommented another example which had been commented out by saying "Another totally unacceptable parody example".

In the future, if you don't like something on the page, please simply edit it to make it less "unacceptable". If it really is so bad it just has to go, please copy it to the talk page and explain what your issue is with the text, so we can discuss the matter and try to come up with something better. --Bushing 23:30, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Is it not obvious that having an example which seeks to mock one posting style is not acceptable? Do you not see a problem when the top-posting example is itself criticising top-posting, while the bottom-posting example is a "serious" example of an appointment being set up? I don't have infinite time to fix every problem I come across on Wikipedia, and was simply trying to help by pointing out the worst problems. Do you think that reverting the changes, to reintroduce the excessive bias is more helpful?
Suggestions for improving this article:
  • Rename it to "Posting styles" - it's really only slightly about top-posting, but also covers other styles
    • Ok, done this. Stevage 10:54, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Simply describe each style neutrally to begin with
    • Almost there, the inline replying bit still has some parody quotes. Stevage 10:54, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Have a section at the bottom about the contention that arises about the choice of style. Somehow restrain yourselves from adding sentences like "Many people despise this form of quoting, for it resembles a forwarded message more than a discussion." Consider which posting styles are used in different environments. It is my experience that in non-technical office environments where people use Outlook to carry on long conversations, top-posting is typically used.
  • Refrain from attempting to determine which is the "best" style. Simply point out what they are, who uses them, and outline some of the arguments made by the most rabid defenders of each side. It is *not* Wikipedia's place to attempt to determine "the truth". Stevage 10:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

This is ridiculous. It reads like it was written by a bottom-posting advocate in high school. "Those who use the TOFU method"?

Also, please don't use tables for visual formatting. Use DIVs and CSS. We probably have templates and global CSS styles for stuff like this, too, and if we don't, we should.

Should also cover newer things like Gmail that solve the conflict; showing only the unique material, in chronological order, and hiding material that has already been read by default, to get the best of both worlds. — Omegatron 17:01, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Best of both worlds? You mean there's something good about top-posting? I routinely send "bugs" to the Gmail team asking them to stop encouraging top-posting and making it worse for those of us who use e-mail clients that expect people to properly trim-post their replies. :P Swap 23:10, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Congratulations. — Omegatron 02:49, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Huh. "Like it was written by a bottom-posting advocate"? I just read through it, and thought it'd mostly been written by a top-posting advocate! —Steve Summit (talk) 17:02, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I've rewritten it since then. Why do you think it was written by a top-posting advocate? — Omegatron 21:32, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I belatedly realized it might have changed substantially. As I read it yesterday, it seemed to be sympathetic towards and even apologetic for the top-posting POV, and somewhat unenthusiastic about bottom-posting. I'll read through it again and see if I can make any balancing changes at some point. —Steve Summit (talk) 18:37, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
The phrase "apologetic for the top-posting POV" implies that you think there's something inherently wrong with it. — Omegatron 21:21, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, personally I am a bottom-poster, but that's beside the point. The fact that it sounds apologetic (a) weakens it (in the methinks-the-lady-doth-protest-too-much sense) and (b) highlights the controversy (as opposed to merely stating the facts) more than perhaps necessary. (But at the same time, it probably is worth explicitly mentioning that this is, for whatever reasons, a polarized and emotional issue, which people can and do get exercised about out of all proportion to the facts and the issue's importance.)
Please understand that I did not post here to try to provoke an argument (let alone start a POV war). Not realizing that the article had recently been rewritten, I posted an ironic comment in response to your "like it was written by a bottom-posting advocate" lament. Then, in response to your question, I gave my (subjective, opinionated) reasons for why the tone seemed as it did to me. —Steve Summit (talk) 22:00, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Check out the version before I edited it.
I tried to make it neutral. I don't know what you think isn't. What do you think is "apologetic" about it? The word "apologetic" implies that there's something inherently wrong with top-posting, which is not a neutral point of view. — Omegatron 23:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Took off the tags

I can't see that these (TONE and NPOV) are appropriate any longer. --Snori 02:55, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Good. The bullet points could still be written into actual sentences and paragraphs instead of sounding like a pro and con fight. — Omegatron 03:56, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Usage

There is NO DATA presented to support the assertions made in this contentious passage with insinuates that bottom-posters are irrational (see use of the word "vehement").

"Vehement" doesn't mean "irrational". — Omegatron 22:33, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] No data on incidence

The statement that "top posting is more common" is completely unsupported. The original citation that was appended to support this explicitly did not make this claim and instead pointed out that advocates of either top or bottom posting were prone to making unsupported claims about how either one was common back in the day. I attempted to edit this and I see that this has now been reverted, without discussion by Omegatron who says that it's "obviously" the most common. That's a completely unsupported, contentious statement.

I think it's only so contentious. It was evident to me that there was a substantial preponderance of top-posting in non-technical environments throughout my experience. I've adjusted the article to reflect this. —Raymond Keller 03:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Incidence And Cause Of Top-Posting

The prior wording made claims about the commonness of top-posting in all environments (by virtue of not qualifying which). As clearly as it is common in some environments it is faux pas in others. I don't think the claim was POV as much as simply unsubstantiated, though evidently true enough if worded more precisely. I reworded more precisely and removed the POV tag.

I believe "interpersonal communication" is not so unified that it can be described on the whole, and rather should be qualified as there are distinct and substantial communities whose posting style preference differs from others. Certain non-top-posting interpersonal communities built the Internet and the Web and most email applications; you might say those communities are not just substantial, but also of consequence; they certainly deserve distinction. I left the top-posting contingent of the "interpersonal communication environment" to be suggested by the "various" qualifier on "environments".

"Customer service" is business, so redundant.

The prior wording took a stab at the cause of top-posting's commonness, saying that top-posting is common "since" it performs such-and-such functions. Pure speculation. Nearly interjected my own speculation in response.

I was able to do the equivalent of adding my own speculation through what I believe to be a non-POV means by saying that the default behavior of popular mail clients encourages top-posting. You can't say that the default behavior of any mail client enforces any style — it's obvious that you can edit an email however you please to conform to whichever style suits you. So you can't say that an email client defaults to any given style. Certainly, though, an email client encourages a style by placement of quoted text and cursor.

—Raymond Keller 03:09, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

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