What is top posting?

Can someone clue me in, ideally without insulting me at the same time? -DBurba

I assumed it was a joke, since you top-posted your response. I am using the USENET standard - bottom posting. Top-posting is posting your response *above* the quoted message. It's generally frowned upon, since most languages read top-to-bottom chronologically.

Brett

This is top-posting.

Top-posting is the bad habit of following up to a posting, and placing your comments at the top of your own new post. In newsgroups populated primarily by Usenet oldtimers, it's considered excruciatingly gauche.

In the Good Old Days, when trn was new, and VAXen running 4.3 dominated the Usenet and email addresses looked like "...![address]", news-reader clients would automatically excise the signature of the parent article, and position the cursor at the end of the quoted original body, and you would add your commentary there.

Sometimes, for lengthy posts, a followup author would move back to the top, and intersperse her commentary with the parent's, in a more pseudo-dialogue format.

Top posting is a very recent phenomena - within the past ten or twelve years.

--Lawrence

I don't see why it's such a problem.... Most news readers now show posts in groups, so it's easy to see which article was the parent article... top posting just makes it easier to see the reply without having to scroll through the parent post to get to the one you want, which is listed above it in the reader anyway....

"Lawrence Statton N1GAK/XE2" wrote in message news:[email]...

It's not so much of a problem (well I guess some consider it is) as an annoyance. I don't know about you but I read from top to bottom, not bottom to top; which is why most people place their newer comments below what's already been said. If the person is actually able to quote well enough, they'll use the other person's quoted material and answer (or agree, disagree) that one statement and/or question (or comment) as if it were actually a conversation.

No no it doesn't, that's what good quoting is for -- which you don't see to know how to do... that's okay though you'll learn. Also try and word wrap your posts, it's pretyt ugly having to side scroll just to read what looks like a long run on sentence (which the post might not even be, might actually have some substance). In any case, not top posting is just good netiquette and should at least be *tried* to be followed. Unless you just want to be annoying or something.

"Howard Wilson II" wrote in message news:[email]...

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Okay.... trying to give this a go..... What do you mean by "learn to quote"?

• David Angelovich

Good man, one less top poster in the world! :)

Meaning don't post the *whole* post you're quoting. Take the relevant bits and pieces you're about to respond to and snip the rest, oh and usually you don't quote the persons signature either. :P

In article , David Angelovich wrote:

It means, don't include 60 lines of text from the previous article in order to add two of your own.

In news:3edc38ec$0$13750$[email], David Angelovich wrote:

I edited your post. See what I did? That's how it works.

You don't quote the whole message. In *some* cases you don't have to quote anything at all, so just delete the quoted lines. Then there is no top post or bottom post issues, it's just a self contained post, like an original post.

In other cases you're responding to a particular thought. Well then keep that line or paragraph you're respond to and put your response under it so people understand what questions or comment you're answering. This is called 'snipping' or 'quoting.'

See how you were really responding to that last line there? So get rid of everything else. Now the conversation is clear, nice eh?

It reads well. Plus if someone's server has lousy retention or just loses posts and the parent is no longer around one can still make sense of *your* post.

Furthermore, your newsreader is wrapping text incorrectly, look at your post, total mess, see look:

posts

article...

Should be like this:

A good newsreader does this automagically (usually to a 72 character line limit), it also puts your cursor at the bottom so you can just start typing. Of course you still have to manually snip the original quoted message in an appropriate way, can't automate that. And see how nicely a thread of responses can pile up and still look clean and be readable.

You can download a program called QuoteFix OE that fixes these bugs in MS Outlook Express. Or just switch to a decent freeware newsreader.

Also, get rid of signatures and the like. My newsreader does that automagically so if I posted a reply to this everything below would be snipped and my cursor would be down below here and ready to type a reply.

Chris

Because now you're forcing people to scroll all the way down to find out what you're responding to, then scroll all the way back up to read your reply. The when someone responds properly to you, they have to do all that, then scroll back down to the bottom again, just because you can't be bothered with following long established procedures.

"David Angelovich" wrote... At news:...

YOU DON'T HAVE TO QUOTE AT ALL. You only quote the relavent and neccesary bits, if any, and then your reply. Like I did. Fullquoting is just as bad as topquoting, in my opinion.

The standard is to quote a bit, reply, quote a bit, reply... So therefore people WILL scroll to the bottom, because they will assume you replied. (This is technichally something I picked up from the Web Forum world, but it seems to carry over.)

In news:bbh2j2$778$[email], D Burba owning the address blabbered:

funny... i always thorght this was top-posting

Top post is this -- where I answer your question above your question. It makes following a conversation hard. Its like talking backwards.

Here is an example.

Fine

To follow the conversation you have to read from the bottom-up.

Bottom posting works much better. You can follow the questions and answers top-down, instead of bottom-up.

Martin

Top posting: posting a reply on top of the original post, like I'm doing now. To some silly people Top Posting is considered impolite or even insulting. such people need to get away from usenet a bit and enjoy life (after geting one). cheers Ariel

Ariel wrote:

The silly people are the ones too lazy or stupid to bottom post. People read things from top to bottom, not bottom to top.

Ariel wrote:

Civilized behaviour means following the code of conduct for the particular group you wish to be a part of. Over the years, it has become the custom NOT to top-post (for good reason).

You have the right to top-post if you wish, but I can assure you that I personally am less likely to either read or reply to such a post.

And, yes, I am aware that I have just done both. Consider yourself honoured.

In article , Ariel wrote:

These are the same silly people who have been posting to Usenet since before you were born. These people generally believe, in opposition to most of society, that any social group ought to be bound by rules of behavior. One of the long-standing rules of usenet is that top-posting is indeed rude for several reasons. First, it makes it difficult to follow the discussion, since the new material appears before the material to which it is a reply. Second, it encourages posters to quote hundreds of lines of text to add one line, which is also a violation of netiquette, whether top or bottom posted. The advantage of bottom posting your single-line response to 100+ lines of quoted text is that it gives people like me to hit the "n" key when they come upon a post with more than a screenful or two of quoted material with nothing new added.

again for the love of god, don't be silly and get a life!! is it really THAT important if someone posts on top or not? hell, usenet is only a negligible tool of ocasional information. no one gives a shit about whether it's correct or not to top-post. i mean, this is not the holy grail or a philosophical doctrine we're discussing here, it's an insubstantial and irrelevant issue.

[email] (Richard Schultz) wrote in message news:...

Why would it be silly to get a life?

In article , Martin McWhorter writes:

*giggle*

Well said!

"Ariel" wrote in message news:[email]...

news:...

wrote:

most

behavior.

whether

You guys are retarded. Look how stupid this kind of garbage posting is.

In news:5GuDa.130892$[email], wwp wrote:

In article , Ariel wrote:

I hope that some day you grow up enough to realize that there are other people in the world besides you. I'm not holding my breath, though.

----- Richard Schultz [email] Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University ----- If you can keep your expectations tiny You'll go through life without being so whiny. -- Matt Groening

I've been writing on this and other newsgroups for a long time and this conversation comes up all the time. My opinion is, I'll bottom post if my response is to something specific in the message. if it's a response to the entire message I'll top post. If my message has little to do with the message i'm responding to, i'll top post.

To people who complain about my top posting and my bottom posting, I say use the kill file on me, I don't care. I have better things to do than to argue with people online about something so unimportant.

You have given the most reasonable answer of all. Thank you. -DBurba

"Zed" wrote in message news:[email]...

conversation comes

something specific

my message has

use the kill file

online about

On Wed, 04 Jun 2003 00:39:04 GMT, Zed wrote: [...]

Your logic is flawed and you need to word wrap. =/

Ok..so how do one configure Outlook to begin at the bottom of a post instead of at the top? Not a big problem I know, but it still kinda annoys me :)

http://jump.to/oe-quotefix

Looks like the page is down though, so you might be able to search Google for alternate download pages (you'll also find some other good fixes for OE).

:)

In news:fDsDa.4076$[email], Venom wrote:

http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/

Outlook Express has many more bugs that just the fact that it doesn't bottom quote. See the page for details on all the things quotefix fixes.

Ideally one should just download a proper freeware newsreader. Or pay money for a commercial one, whatever.

Chris

What would the point be, then?