Yeah, that is an early one. I have seen a later discussion of that
convention vs top posting that explains it in more detail. The bottom post
convention grew out of usenet type new servers where anyone could jump in
and comment at any time. This often results in branching of a thread many
different ways. In that type of environment it is usually advised to leave
the whole thread or at least the part pertaining to your reply above your
comments so the reader can find the context of your message by just reading
naturally from top to bottom. With plain text readers in the early days
that made for relatively easy reading. In those cases the > was used to
indent each quoted part of the text so you could track how many replies back
someone had commented.
Top posting came from email users. Email started as a one to one type
system and it was more natural to put your reply first so that the other
person you were talking with didn't have to read down through what they just
sent to see what you said. This is even more natural today since most email
readers I have seen start at the top of the message so what you see is the
most recent reply. This carried over to email reflectors, even though it
peeves usenet users who look to the bottom for what is new.
David Robbins K1TTT
e-mail: mailto:k1ttt@arrl.net
web: http://wiki.k1ttt.net
AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://k1ttt.net
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Coslo [mailto:mjc5@psu.edu]
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2012 21:01
To: rfi@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [RFI] Original message and replying
On Jan 20, 2012, at 1:36 PM, Dave Harmon wrote:
> This is the first I have heard of this....
> I guess not many others have heard of it either.
This is from a link:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html
>From the FAQ on proper posting:
>> - If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
>> summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just
>> enough text of the original to give a context. This will make
>> sure readers understand when they start to read your response.
>> Since NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the
>> postings from one host to another, it is possible to see a
>> response to a message before seeing the original. Giving context
>> helps everyone. But do not include the entire original!
I will note that the faq from 1995. I was an early adopter of the internet
and groups, so that was what I grew up with. I don't know whether it is
because I grew up with bottom posting, I just find it easier. But it's
probably like the discussions about "73" versus "73's".
These days, early adopters are in a decided minority, and many people like
to top post. As long as there isn't a ton of unecessary text, I can make my
way through them.
- 73 de Mike N3LI -
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